Love in the Time of Science
by Morgen86
Summary: Love. Tragedy. The things we’ve left unsaid. This is their story. Set after episode 5.05. Mer/Der
1. Chapter 1

_So, it's been a loooong time since I've written any fanfic, and I'm a little nervous about it.  The World Turned Over was a long time ago, and I'm hoping I can still make the characters sound like themselves.  Please forgive me if I'm a bit rusty.  But I've missed writing fic a lot, and I'm really, really enjoying season five, so...new fic!  This is going to be a multi-chapter story.  I know the general plot, but I haven't got a clue about the length yet.  Anyway, this story picks up right after episode 5.05 because I've got to start somewhere, and I thought there was lots of interesting goodness in that episode.  So yeah, this is Meredith and Derek's story, as told by me.  Enjoy._

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The smooth wall of the bathtub against her back was cold. The floor was colder still. Her toes felt numb and distant, like little ice cubes sewn onto the ends of her feet. Meredith shifted positions, pulling her legs up under the warmth of her robe. She crossed them Indian style, tucking her toes against the backs of her knees. Her feet began to leech the warmth from her legs and send it slowly creeping to the tips of her frozen toes. She pulled the belt on her robe tighter. The bathroom felt like an ice box. It might finally be time to turn the heat up. Izzie would like that. For all her bubbly warmth, her hands were perpetually freezing. Meredith leaned forwards, yawning into her lap, her jaw stretching until it seemed about to crack. She gave her head a little shake and rubbed the back of her hand across her eyes, trying to get them to focus. Her mother's utilitarian handwriting was getting harder and harder to read with every passing minute, and her body was going numb from so long on the bathroom floor. The sensible thing to do would be to shut the stupid diary and crawl right back into bed beside Derek. It was warmer there and peaceful. Not to mention relatively free of reminders of her own surgical incompetence. The door to the bedroom was open the smallest of slivers, and the space that beckoned from beyond was dark and indistinct. It was every bit as out of focus as her mother's handwriting, but the siren song of sleep had nothing on Ellis Grey.

Meredith propped a fist beneath her chin and slouched towards the diary perched on her knee. Like textbooks at two am, the letters blurred and swam indignantly before finally popping into place. There was little to do but keep reading, turning page after page of surgeries. The stress of complicated procedures was spelled out for her side by side with the dizzying rush of moments when life and death hung in a balance. She read on and on as darkness ticked its way towards dawn. Her eyes felt dry and bloodshot. It was a struggle to keep them open even though her mind buzzed with a noisy desperation, wanting more and more of the diary. She wanted more and she wanted sleep. Meredith stared at the page in a stupor until her eyelids fell like bricks and she saw the kidney land with a splat on the floor. Splat, splat, splat. Over and over again she watched it fall behind closed eyes in a rhythm like heartbeats. Splat and there it lay at her feet. The shocked silence that followed was this screaming thing that swelled endlessly inside her mind from a few seconds into a damn good model for infinity. Meredith forced her eyes open again and the kidneys stopped falling. The room felt bright and unfamiliar as she shook herself out of sleep and back into whatever it was that passed for consciousness at two in the morning. The diary drew her like a moth to a flame, and she stared until she could see. More words, more days, more surgeries and never her name.

Sixty-three pages so far, and she had yet to be mentioned even in passing. Meredith yawned into the open book, reading a paragraph three times before it registered. She wasn't in it yet despite the fact that she had certainly been born already. Maybe that was a good thing. The childhood of the surgically incompetent could hardly be compelling. Meredith Grey, dropper of kidneys, or Ellis Grey, super surgeon. It wasn't hard to pick which one was the best seller there. She pulled her robe tighter with one hand as she turned to the next page with the other.

There was more. There was always more. Her eyes ached and burned and she leaned forward as she yawned, letting them close for a few blissful moments. And then a few moments more… Meredith blinked and the room blurred to pale blue. The harsh lights of the OR flooded the bathroom. She thought that should be strange, but it wasn't. Her scrubs felt scratchy, and she couldn't remember putting them on. She never wore scrubs at home. She looked down to see the donor kidney resting on her knee, fresh and healthy and covered in stray hairs and pieces of lint. "Pink up," she muttered, jiggling it with her knee. It sat there useless, purple and lifeless as dread began to creep quickly down her spine. "Pink up. Please." The sudden desperation made her dizzy, and she closed her eyes and held her breath like she was seven again and making a wish. "Come on, just pink up," she said. Meredith bounced her knee harder and the kidney jostled up and down, slapping against her leg with a thick, wet sound. Nothing. "Pink the hell up!" she snapped, her eyes flying open again as she flicked it with her finger. The kidney was still as purple as a bruise but she could suddenly see the pink of her own finger poking through the tip of her surgical glove. She felt cold inside, like she had just poured a cup of grease – cold and unpleasant and half way to congealed – down her throat and into the hollow pit of her stomach. "I popped a glove," she moaned dismally.

"What?" Burke sat opposite her on the bathroom floor, crosslegged and frowning over his surgical mask.

Meredith lifted the kidney up to him, silently berating herself for not having Mrs. Patterson's heart on hand as well. At least Burke didn't seem to mind. "In surgery, when I was holding it," she explained. "I popped a glove with my fingernail." Burke leaned forward, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the kidney. "I think I may have nicked her heart."

"You had every opportunity to speak up before I closed her chest. Every opportunity." His voice pulsed with fury, and he held out his hand. "Give me Mrs. Patterson's heart."

Meredith blinked and stared down at the kidney. "What?" The bathroom widened, putting a chasm between them, and she had no choice but to stand up. She moved slowly, gripping the kidney with both hands like a lifeline. "Here," she murmured. He could have it if he wanted, even if it was a kidney. "Passing the heart," she said hopefully. It poured through her fingers like sand and hit the floor with a sickening splat.

Burke stared down at the floor. "That's a kidney, Grey. What did you do with Mrs. Patterson's heart?" Meredith shook her head, worrying at the tear in her glove as guilt hit her like a hammer.

"I'm sorry." She dropped to her knees and scooted forward, reaching out for the kidney. It was slippery as butter and as hard to hold as water in uncupped hands. Her fingers scratched and scrambled at the organ, but they couldn't find purchase. The kidney lay on the floor and the resounding splat echoed over and over again, filling the room with its awful sound. Splat, splat, splat. Meredith shook her head repeatedly to the rhythm. "I popped a glove," she moaned, looking up towards Burke. She held out her hand, pushing her finger through the hole as proof, but Derek stood where Burke had been. He leaned against the far wall of the bathroom, the hint of a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. He grabbed her hand as it fluttered in front of him, and pulled her easily to her feet. His thumb rubbed against her exposed fingertip, pushing past the broken glove slowly, so slowly, like he was peeling her apart. The touch was gentle as a whisper, but it burned like a flame. "Derek…" she moaned, taking his name from a word to a sigh. She stumbled towards him, the kidney lying forgotten by her feet. All feeling radiated out from the point where Derek touched her. The Shepherd Method. Her laughter was breathy, and a familiar, aching pulse picked up between her legs. Gotta love that Shepherd Method. She inched closer to him, but he turned away abruptly. Her hand fell limp against her side.

"You haven't even scratched the surface on what you need to learn," Derek said and the fire in her veins turned to ice as he shook his head.

"Derek, wait," she pleaded, glancing back at the forgotten kidney. She had to pick it up. She had to, but all the warmth had left with Derek and she felt cold. The finger poking through her glove was blue. Cyanotic. "I'll pick it up," she said. "I promise I'll pick it up." But the blue that stained her finger was creeping slowly up her arms until she felt too cold to move. They flopped useless at her side and she could only watch as another hand appeared in front of her, scooping up the kidney as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Meredith followed the line of the hand holding the kidney up to find her mother towering above her in navy scrubs.

She reached out for the organ, but Ellis yanked the kidney from her grasping hands. "You're dropping kidneys?" she demanded. "Pathetic. The Meredith I knew was a force of nature, passionate, focused, a fighter. What happened to you?" She pivoted on her heel and stalked straight towards the toilet, holding the kidney out in front of her.

"Mom?" Meredith scrambled after her, panic swelling in her chest. "What are you doing?" The distance from the tub to the toilet was impossibly long, and her scrubs were suddenly cold and water logged. She left a puddle on the floor with every step. "Mom…" Ellis had reached the toilet, and she held the kidney out over gaping bowl. "You can't," said Meredith, but the words sounded weak and useless. "My patient's waiting for it."

"Waiting for inspiration?" cut in Ellis, her voice as cold as a scalpel's edge.

"No," stammered Meredith. "For the kidney. My patient…she needs that." Meredith doubled her pace, but the distance between her and her mother lengthened with every stride. Ellis let go and the kidney fell, landing in the toilet bowl with a heavy splat. It was a thick and resounding, endless splat. Splat, splat, splat.

"No…" moaned Meredith. She stood frozen, staring in wide-eyed disbelief as her mother reached out and pulled the handle on the toilet, flushing the kidney away. "You'll clog the toilet. You'll clog…"

"I will not. Ridiculous, Meredith. You're not half the surgeon I was," said Ellis, her voice endlessly loud above the roar of the flushing toilet.

"Mom, please," cried Meredith. "I'll try again! I'll do better, I promise." Ellis faded like smoke and a new kidney blossomed in her outstretched hands. It was blue. Cyanotic. A kidney cold as ice. "Walking with the kidney," she whispered even as it fell. It fell forever. Splat, splat, splat.

The diary hit the ground with a slap and Meredith jerked awake. She snuffled, shaking off the heavy sense of disorientation. Where…and _what…_ She shook her head. The bathtub was still right behind her, solid and cold against her back. There were no kidneys lying conspicuously on the tile. The dream bled from her brain with each moment she kept her eyes open, leaving her with strange echoes of images all faint and incomplete. She yawned again. She still felt strange, like all the world was a hallucination. The kidney, she'd been dreaming about the kidney… But why? She felt cold and spread too thin, as if tiredness had emptied her out from within. Even yawning was an effort. She shuddered and her shoulders jerked hard enough to hurt. Sleep seemed imperative now. It was a long way to standing, but… Sleep. Nothing sounded nicer. Meredith pushed the mess of her hair away from her face and plucked the diary off of the bathroom floor. She smoothed her hand over a page that had crumpled in the tumble from her knee, staring blankly down at the entry. The cover was halfway to closed when her hand stilled and her breath caught. There, right beside her thumb, was her own name, marching quietly across the page just like any other word. She rubbed her thumb over her name as if she could erase it, not daring to read the words on either side of it. Her heart beat faster and she lost the desire for sleep. She stared and stared at her name until even the familiar order of the letters began to feel strange. She could read it. She could. It was just a stupid diary, and whatever it said could hardly be unbearable. Her promises felt empty inside her head, but she pulled her hand away from the page and found the sentence with her name.

_That's the problem with Meredith._

Her gaze flew backwards over the text, trying to find the context for the sentence. She turned the page back and stared at the date. It was an entry she was certain she hadn't got to yet. She started reading voraciously at the start of the entry, gulping down passages whole and leaving her mind with barely a moment to decipher them. Surgery, surgery, Richard, surgery… Dread mounted in her chest. She turned the page back again. Her thumb still hovered right beneath her name.

The door swung open with a slow creak. Meredith looked up and snapped the diary shut in one fluid motion, wincing as she caught her finger in its clutches. Derek loomed in the doorway. He'd pulled on a pair of faded navy boxers, but other than that he was as naked as she had left him and only marginally more conscious. She glanced down at the diary feeling suddenly guilty, then back to Derek, then to the diary again. A confusing spiral of frustration and relief corkscrewed its way through her as her mother's voice was silenced once again.

"Meredith," mumbled Derek. He blinked rapidly and pressed a hand to his eyes against the bright light of the bathroom. "It's three am. What are you doing?"

She shrugged down at the diary. "I couldn't sleep. Normally I just use a flashlight, but my eyes were too tired to focus. I thought the lamp would wake you up, so…" She stammered to a halt, biting her lip and staring up at him. "Did I wake you up?"

He yawned, the sound trailing off into a groan as he lowered himself to the bathroom floor. He rubbed absently at the side of his face. "I'm not sure," he said softly. "I thought I heard your voice." His expression turned curious and a little disbelieving. "Were you reading out loud?"

"I was dreaming, I think…"

Derek smiled. "You were dreaming?" he echoed. Meredith nodded. "And you were too tired to read without all the comfort of the bathroom floor to keep you awake?" She nodded again, although this time the motion was sheepish. Tiredness was staking its claim in her once more, and the desire to close her eyes was almost equal with the need to know what her mother said about her. What the problem with Meredith was… Although, she could wager at least a dozen guesses without so much as another peek at the diary. "But you don't think you need to sleep now?" prodded Derek.

"I do," said Meredith. She clutched the diary to her chest, feeling suddenly defensive. "It's just, the diary. I can't stop reading it!"

"You can't?" Derek rocked back on his heels, apparently amused.

"I _can't_," she repeated, stressing the word. "It's like crack, Derek. My mother's diary…" She shook her head, her hands flailing in an ungainly attempt at emphasis. "It's a crack-diary!"

"And you're addicted?" Derek grinned at that as she nodded vehemently. He leaned forward and slid his hands under her arms, pulling her to her feet as he stood. "Junkie," he teased, kissing the top of her head before growing serious. Meredith could feel the change in mood radiating out from deep within him, seeping slowly into her. She melted into the solid plane his chest offered her. She was tired. So tired. Standing made the exhaustion that much more pronounced and she sunk against him, letting his arms hold her up. He kept her close like a treasure, his hands pressed firm against her back. Her eyelids flirted with the thought of closing for a few moments before giving in and falling shut.

"I think you were in my dream," she said. Her voice was a whisper, just a breath of sound, and her lips brushed against his skin as she spoke.

"Yeah?"

Meredith nodded. "Yeah. It was weird…" She tried to put the pieces back together, to remember what had been said as she slept, but the brief, fleeting memories had incongruous edges that didn't fit, and all she had left was a feeling. It ran through her like ice water and nails on a chalkboard. The dream left a bitter taste in her mouth and the diary still rested like a thorn in her hand.

"Was it a good dream?" It was a question, but the sound of his voice had a certainty to it, as if he could tell by the way she leaned into him. He didn't look surprised when she shook her head. She bowed forward again until her forehead pressed against his chest. Derek's fingers danced idly across her back, tracing designs over the thick fleece of her robe. Twists and loops, circles and figure eights. Infinity. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked, and_ it _meant everything – the dream, the diary, three am on the bathroom floor.

Yes and no. Never and always… Reality felt as disjointed as the dream, faded around the edges from lack of sleep. The words all caught in her throat, stuck right behind the confusion of her dream, and Meredith shook her head. In the silence of the bathroom, she could hear her hair rustle against his chest as she moved. This was where she showed him just how healed she was now. This was where she spoke. She was sure of it. But the dream was a mystery and the diary… She would talk about it if she could find the words, but the only one that came to mind was disappointment, and she had felt that one enough for a lifetime.

"I want to sleep," she said, but she held him that much closer. Derek tucked a hand under her chin, raising her gaze to meet his with the gentle pressure of his thumb. Her eyelids drooped and she tried not to yawn in his face. "I'm tired," she mumbled. "So tired."

He nodded and the room went dark. It took her a moment to realize he had flicked the lights off. And then he was nudging her with his toes, walking her backwards out of the room. The cold tile beneath her feet was replaced by the soft and sinking warmth of her bedroom carpet. Darkness enveloped her with a fuzzy familiarity like a favorite sweater. Derek backed her up all the way to the bed, and her knees buckled as they bumped against the mattress. The kidney was still glowing faintly in its jar and she smiled at it. It reminded her of them a little, the kidney. It sat preserved in the glass, damaged but everlasting – a light in the darkness. It was hardly the sort of metaphor she'd let herself share, even with him, but she liked it. The angry, pink-haired girl still tucked away in a hidden chamber of her heart pronounced it true. Their love, illuminated.

She could make out the vague shape of Derek's face as he crouched in front of her and pried the diary from her hands. Her fingers relinquished it easily, but her eyes traced its path like a hawk, not turning away until Derek set it down on the table beside the jar. And then his hands were on her again, untying the belt to her robe. His fingers never moved needlessly; every motion was precise and purposeful. The knot came loose with a single tug of his index finger, and the robe fell open in the front. It slipped down her arms to pool against the mattress, leaving her with a pale nakedness that he stared at. It was still novel to be looked at that way, in a way that wasn't about sex at all, but was just as full of love and wanting and somehow even more exposed. She thought her soul might be showing instead of her skin.

He kissed her in the dark, and it wasn't like earlier when he'd been handsy and she'd been giggling as they shimmied out of their jeans. I want a demonstration, she'd whispered. Of what? The Shepherd Method. I hear it's world famous. She warmed from the inside at the memory. Then everything had been fast and intoxicating, pulsing with the needy heat of make-up sex. Now it was a single kiss, as soft and silent as the still of the night, and she let him lay her back against the pillows.

"Sleep," he said as he pulled away from her. The bed groaned when he climbed in, and she rolled towards the dip in the mattress. She turned her back on the diary and tucked her head against his chest, trying to settle into sleep. The silence was beautiful for a moment – just their breathing and the endless quiet of the night – but too soon the buzzing started up again. It was a crazy whir inside her mind like machinery spinning wildly out of control, spinning with no intention of ever stopping. Her name was in her mother's diary, and the diary, for all the determination of her turned back, sat as inconspicuous as an elephant on the bedside table. Meredith twisted restlessly, squirming beneath the covers and flinging them about as Ellis's face swam before her closed eyes. A fragment of her dream floated back to her as Ellis dropped a donor kidney into the toilet bowl and flushed it away. Something bitter tugged at her heart. She wasn't half the surgeon her mother was.

Derek grunted when she caught him with a wandering elbow. "You really can't sleep, huh?" he asked. He sounded hoarse and tired, his words tinged with the hint of frustration. Meredith's sigh was exasperated, and she deliberately avoided looking at the glowing red numbers on the alarm clock, but she said nothing. Derek rolled onto his side and propped his head up with a hand. He stared at her, his eyes glinting like polished stones in the darkness. "What is it?" he asked quietly. This time the frustration was gone. Meredith hesitated, looking up at him for a long moment, unspoken words tickling her lips.

She shifted abruptly onto her side, turning her face from him and towards the darkness. His chest was warm against her back and she felt more than heard him sigh resignedly. Still, his arm snaked around her waist, holding her spooned against him. The tickle at her lips finally turned into speech; words came easier when she couldn't see his face. "I poured my mother down the drain," she whispered.

"What?"

"Down the drain," she repeated. "I poured her ashes down the drain in one of the scrub rooms. I thought she'd like it there. That it was where she'd want to be…"

Derek was silent at first, simply rubbing his hand up and down the length of her arm. But then he pressed his lips to the nape of her neck and his voice hummed against her skin. "That was nice of you."

Meredith shook her head. "I thought it was done, you know? I laid her to rest, but she's still around." She stared at the diary – the glow of the kidney illuminated its edges. "Her ghost won't go away." Derek was silent, free of fake promises; his reassurance was everything she could feel. His arms held her in a perfect circle. Safe. That more than anything else helped her keep speaking. "Sometimes I wonder if it'll ever go away," she whispered. "If I'll ever get to stop comparing…"

Derek pulled her nearer still, until his heart beat against her back and she felt enveloped by him. "You don't have to be your mother," he said, and there was something pleading in his voice. "It's you I love, not her." He paused and breathed in deeply, as if he could inhale all that she was. "Mer, you don't have to be her."

"Yeah," she said. A cautious smile twitched across her face. He always had the prettiest words. She could be enough. Maybe she could. The diary still stood out in the darkness, but she nestled against Derek and let him keep her close.

She closed her eyes and tried to forget the sight of her own name scrawled across the page.


	2. Chapter 2

_So, this chapter took a little longer to finish than I'd thought it would. It's also quite a bit longer than I thought it would be. These two facts may or may not be connected... Anyway, this is chapter two. It's from Derek's perspective this time, which, while I find him very fun and adventuresome to write, always manages to drive me a little bit crazy. It is very hard to pretend to think like a boy. Or a man. Sorry, Derek. You're a man. So yeah, this is the next chapter. It picks up the next day. And thank you again for the many kind welcome backs I received. It's so very nice to feel welcome. And I'm very glad to hear people are enjoying the story so far. Hopefully this update won't disappoint. And, speaking of the update, here it is! Enjoy._

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Derek leaned against the counter of the nurses' station, scanning the chart in his hands while failing to register a single word. He cast another glance down the hall to his left. Nurses and orderlies were bustling quickly by in both directions. A man in a hospital gown was making a slow trek towards an open door, clinging to his IV pole like it was the only real thing left in the world. Derek forced himself to turn back to the chart, and took a long swig of the coffee he had set on the counter. He wasn't looking for her. Not really. He drummed his pen against the counter and leaned forward to get a better view of the other corridor that emptied into the open space surrounding the nurses' station. He saw lab coats and scrubs and a woman struggling under the weight of several dozen yellow roses. The intercom crackled for a moment, and then a smooth, feminine voice began to page a Dr. Jansen. The hospital hummed with constant noise, never sleeping. She could be anywhere.

He shook his head, annoyed with himself. The last thing Meredith needed was a babysitter. He heaved a sigh, scrawling his signature across the chart before passing it back to a nurse. A glance at his watch told him he had twenty minutes until he was wanted in surgery. He had things to do other than wait around aimlessly, hoping for a glimpse of her. She'd seemed herself when she woke up that morning – haggard and tired from the hours she had spent on the bathroom floor – but herself. She'd yawned into her coffee mug all the way to work and she hadn't said much, but she was fine. The diary had stayed on the bedside table when she stumbled into the bathroom, and neither of them had said a word about the night before. He was being ridiculous, but ever since she'd toyed with not breathing the morning of the ferry disaster, that ancient old bathtub had taken on a sinister flair in his memories. He wished he had found her reading Ellis's diary in any other room of the house. Anywhere but there.

He was staring aimlessly down at the ground when her voice reached his ears. It cut straight through the din like the high, clear note of a bell ringing out. He looked up to see her walking down the hall, a stack of charts in her arms and her interns trailing behind her. She was talking to them as they navigated the busy hallway, her voice hoarse but efficient.

"No, run to the lab, please," she said to a female intern whose name he admittedly still didn't know. "See if Ms. Porter's results are in. Page me if they are." She turned to the intern on her left, passing off two of the charts in her arms. "Go ahead and discharge Mr. Huckley and Mrs. Branch, and then head down to the pit." She pinched the bridge of her nose with her free hand and let her eyes flutter shut, trundling down the hallway without the slightest regard for where she was placing her feet. When Meredith looked up again she finally caught sight of him and flashed him a tiny smile. She walked over to the nurses' station, coming to a halt right beside him. "Hey," she said.

"Hey," echoed Derek. Up close her exhaustion was palpable. "You okay?"

"Mmm…" Her laughter was dry and self-deprecating. She yawned into her hands. "Never let me get that little sleep again. I feel like the waking dead." Derek nodded. "Plus, withdrawals," she added as she picked up his coffee cup and took a long sip.

"Withdrawals?"

"From the crack-diary," she said matter-of-factly.

"Right, right. The crack-diary." He tried not to look as anxious as he felt. "How's that going?"

Meredith shrugged and shook her head, still nursing his coffee. "I left it at home in an effort to preserve my sanity." She glanced down at his empty hands, one eyebrow quirking like a question mark. "What are you up to?"

"Killing time." He checked his watch again, "I've got a cordotomy in fifteen minutes. Your ever delightful best friend should be prepping him right now." He hoped that didn't sound too harsh; working with Cristina Yang was taxing. She had a way of looking at him as if she was barely tolerating his presence in the OR even though he was the attending. If the sudden twitch at the corners of Meredith's mouth meant anything, it had sounded every bit as sarcastic out loud as it had inside his head.

"Cute. Very cute," she said. "That reminds me, I'm supposed to be tracking down _your_ best friend."

"He's not my best friend." The statement rose up unbidden from somewhere deep down and unexamined. But once he heard the words out loud he knew they were true.

"He's not? I thought you two were friends again."

"We are, but he's not my…" He hesitated, staring at Meredith. She was watching him expectantly, green eyes wide and serious. If anyone fit the bill of best friend these days, it was her, but she still had her person. "We're not you and Cristina," he said at last.

She nodded but didn't speak. When she was silent, he could see the exhaustion that clung to her more clearly. It fell in layers over her shoulders, making her slouch as if the pull of gravity was just too much. It muted the sparkle in her eyes and left them solemn. She yawned again, and all he wanted was to gather her in his arms and let her sleep. He settled for bumping his shoulder against hers in an attempt to make her smile. "What are you up to with Sloan today? Saving the world one facelift at a time?"

Meredith rolled her eyes. "Something like that. I don't know. Honestly, if I can just get through the day without dropping anything on the ground again, I'll be fine." The sudden bitterness to her voice set off warning bells inside his head. She took a final sip of his coffee and held it out to him. Derek ignored the cup to wrap his finger and thumb around her wrist, holding her lightly hostage.

"Meredith…"

Her gaze flicked to his hand, but she made no mention of it. "I should go," she said. She tugged against him, but his fingers kept her there.

"You're a good surgeon," he said quietly.

She stared up at him with hollow eyes, vacant and faraway. They didn't get that look that often anymore, but every time they did his skin felt cold and clammy. Those were the eyes that had drowned in the bay.

"Right. We'll see," she said and her voice had an edge like broken glass. "Look, I've gotta go." She set the coffee down on the counter and wriggled out of his grasp. The smile she gave him did nothing for the emptiness behind her eyes. He watched her walk away and tried to shake off the layer of unease that coated his mind like scum on a pond. He had a cordotomy to get to.

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Someone had left the TV on in the lounge, and he hadn't bothered to turn it off. From the looks of it, a soap opera was underway. Derek glanced at it every now and then, amusing himself with the never ending hysterics of heavily made-up blond women. But mostly he kept his eyes on the thick stack of paperwork spread out over the table in front of him. He had a crick in his neck courtesy of the cordotomy, and he rubbed at it absently now and then. A half eaten tuna sandwich sat to the side on its cellophane wrapper, the bread already starting to turn soggy. He couldn't decide which was less appetizing: the sandwich or the towering mountain of paperwork. He rolled his head slowly from left to right, still working on the tension in his neck. What he really wanted was to page Meredith to the nearest on call room and let her wring the tension from him like water from a sponge. He closed his eyes, seeing her in front of him shrugging out of her scrubs. She'd pull her hair from its ponytail and let it spill over her shoulders to graze the tops of her breasts. Her legs would twine around him, her skin warm and smooth and slick, and she'd gasp his name when she came, her voice hissing past his ear. In that moment, she would be a secret that only he knew.

Derek shook his head roughly, wincing as he jerked his aching neck. The sudden twinge of pain helped more than anything else to scrape the sight of her from the backs of his eyelids. He coughed and looked around awkwardly, self-conscious as if someone else had seen her naked behind his closed eyes. A woman's voice cried out from the TV, the vent in the ceiling hummed, but the room was empty save for him. Derek blinked hard. The papers were still waiting for him. If he was going to get anywhere he had to concentrate on things that weren't Meredith without a shirt on, but when he didn't think of her naked he thought of her staring at him with that emptiness in her eyes, dripping exhaustion from every limb. With a voice like broken glass. She was fine. His next surgery was two hours away, and he'd been neglecting the administrative side of his job more than usual lately. Tedious as it was, there was no good excuse to get him away from the stack of papers requiring his signature, his approval, his time. Meredith was fine. He sighed and picked up his pen.

He'd fallen into a rhythm, and was a good fourth of the way through the stack, when the door to the lounge swung open with a whoosh. Derek looked up in time to see Mark collapse onto the nearest sofa.

"Hey," muttered Mark, his eyes closed.

Derek nodded. "Hey." He signed another form.

_That reminds me, I'm supposed to be tracking down __your__ best friend._

Mark was his friend. Not his best friend anymore, but…not that far off. He could ask. He cleared his throat and tried to sound casual. "How's Meredith doing?"

"Isn't that what I ask you?" said Mark. He sounded vaguely confused, but not enough to warrant opening his eyes.

"She's working with you today, right?"

"Yeah."

"So how's she doing?" Whatever hold he had on casual was apparently now gone because Mark finally opened his eyes and pushed himself up into a slouch.

"Fine." He shrugged. "Why?"

Derek stared down at his sandwich, crumpling it up in its cellophane. It wasn't edible. "No reason," he muttered. She was fine, whole and healed and all the wonderful things she had promised him, but it was the little things that ate away at him. Stupid little things that he couldn't admit to her like the way she looked when she stepped out of the shower, her hair sopping wet and plastered around her face. That still got to him sometimes. Or the way she could be smiling at him one moment, but then something would roll in over her eyes and, next thing he knew, she'd be a million miles away. And that damn bathtub. It seemed it was her sanctuary, the place she went at three am to bring Ellis back from the dead.

_That's not a bath. I know what a bath looks like. _

He'd never call it a sanctuary. It was forever the place she first drowned.

"Just, take it easy on her today," he said.

Mark leaned forward, eager and curious, delighted each time he was let in. "Why?"

"No reason," said Derek a little too quickly. "She's tired. Long night."

Mark's eyebrows wiggled. "Goin' at it 'til the break of dawn, huh?" His grin was devilish, "She is gonna love you covering for her."

"That's why you don't mention it to her," snapped Derek. "And it wasn't sex." His hand slapped down against the table, and he shook his head. This was why Mark wasn't his best friend anymore. He'd almost forgot, but _this_ was why. "Forget it," he said roughly. "Just forget I said anything."

"Hey, I'm sorry," said Mark, holding up his hands. "What'd I do?"

Derek shook his head and signed another form. "Nothing," he muttered. The crick in his neck sunk his mood, and he scowled at Mark for a long moment as his fingers worked their way along his spine. The other man sat on the couch, his face an open book as it always was. Mark meant no harm. Sure, he had more than his fair share of moments of blinding stupidity, but he never meant any harm by it. Not really. It's what made it hard to hate him. Derek dragged a hand back through his hair. "I don't know. Something's bothering her."

"So ask her about it," suggested Mark. He smiled knowingly. "Chicks love to talk about their feelings."

"I have," snapped Derek, suddenly irritated. "She says things, we talk, but I can't just…" He couldn't ask. Not the heart of it. Not the real question. He couldn't say it to her. He felt frustrated and snarled on the inside, like a hairball choking a drain. "What do I say?" he mused bitterly. "Honey, are you feeling a little crazy today?" A harsh bark of laughter punctuated his words. "I can't say that."

Mark was silent, and the weight of what he'd said echoed and echoed inside his head. Crazy. The guilt crept in. "She's not crazy," he added quickly. "I _never_ thought she was. But before…things were so bad for her before." He stared down at the scattered forms and files in front of him, talking to himself more than Mark, talking to erase the guilt and explain it away. "She's better now, but sometimes there are moments. Little things. They remind me of how she used to be, and I don't think… I don't want to close my eyes only to find her right back where she was before because she used to be…" Empty. A shell. A ghost. Broken from the inside out. "She was just so damn…"

"Depressed?" Mark's voice broke the room in two and jerked Derek's head up. "She was fucking depressed, man."

"Don't diagnose her," he snapped. "You're not a shrink."

"I'm just saying what I saw," said Mark quietly. "That many deaths in a row? It'd screw with anyone's head."

Derek sighed. Mark didn't get it. It wasn't just the deaths. They were part of it, but there was more. Ellis's death and Susan's…they followed her own. Their deaths hadn't stopped her from swimming; the water in the well ran deeper than that. He stood up abruptly, pushing his papers into a messy pile. He'd drive himself crazy dwelling on that day.

"She's fine," he said. He gathered up what was left of his sandwich, and tossed it into the trash in a long, clean arc. "She could just use some cheering up."

Mark grinned like a kid with candy. "Sex always cheers me up," he suggested. "Helps me cheer up a lot of nurses too."

"Right. That's charming, Mark."

"Hey, don't knock it 'til you've tried it."

Derek snorted. "I did." He thought of Rose, and his smile felt dry and humorless as it stretched across his face. "It didn't work."

-----

The rest of the day passed quickly in surgery, the back part of Derek's brain humming constantly with ideas for cheering Meredith up. Something simple and low-key that they could do tonight. Something to keep her away from the pull of Ellis's diary and the constant crush of the hospital for an hour or two. Something that would just let her relax. By the time the sun had set and he'd changed back into his street clothes, he had an idea. He loitered by the elevators, waiting for her.

"Hey," called Meredith. Her voice shook him from his thoughts, and he looked up to find her at the end of the hall. A smile flickered across her face like a candle caught in the wind, struggling not to be snuffed out. "You ready to go?" She looked tired; her face was ever paler than it had been in the morning, as if the day had stripped the last vestiges of color from her skin. Her smile just barely made it to the corners of her eyes.

Derek shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his coat, fingers gripping the seams for support. He could cheer her up. He cocked his head and smiled at her. Charming, that was the goal. "Go out with me," he said.

A frown blossomed on Meredith's brow. "What? To Joe's?"

"No, not to Joe's. To dinner. Go out with me." He took a step closer but her frown only deepened. Maybe it was simple confusion. They weren't the sort who dated. Dates had been commonplace with Rose. They'd been abundant in the beginning with Addison. But with Meredith, their actual dates could be counted on one hand. It wasn't their thing. Or, going by the jut of Meredith's chin, it wasn't her thing.

"You mean like on a date?" she asked, the hint of laughter making her voice warm and melodic, even if it was mocking. Her eyes were wide and sparkling with amusement.

"Yes."

"You want to buy me dinner?" She sidled up to him just as the elevator opened, wearing an incredulous grin that hid her exhaustion and made him want to kiss her right there. He took advantage of the moment and grabbed her around the waist, half walking and half carrying her into the elevator with him.

The doors slid shut, sealing them briefly from the rest of the world. Derek pressed her up against the far wall, bracing himself with one arm as he leaned towards her. The space between them bled away and their hips bumped together as their lips touched. She kissed him back, harder than he would have guessed from the weariness she wore like a cloak. Her fingernails raked across his scalp, and the air in the elevator crackled like a live wire. This was what they did best. This was how he knew her best. When they pulled apart, her cheeks were flushed. Not much, but enough to bring a hint of color back to her face. She looked less like a ghost. "I want to buy you dinner," he agreed.

She giggled again, tilting her face towards his like a flower courts the sun. "That's very sweet, Derek, but you don't have to buy me a steak to get laid."

"I don't want to get laid," he said automatically. Meredith's eyebrows shot straight up, and he cringed as she pulled away from him ever so slightly. It was almost imperceptible, but it left him feeling cold. Cold and stupid. He gave a rapid shake of his head. "I mean, I do. I _really_ do, but, that's not the point here." The words sounded awkward, even to him, and Meredith crossed her arms over her chest. "I just want to take you to dinner. No catch."

"No catch," she echoed, sounding for all the world like she didn't believe him.

"None," he said solemnly. The elevator opened for them, and he slipped an arm around her as they walked out. "It'd just be you and me, food and wine. No roommates, no—"

"So this is a roommate thing?" she said, cutting him off. She was frowning again, worn down and weary. The glow he had conjured up in the elevator vanished as they hit the night air. He touched her shoulder cautiously and she sighed, "You really don't like them?"

"This isn't a roommate thing," he said. Meredith just stared at him. "I wasn't even going to bring them up. I like them fine, and you're not ready for them to move out."

"No, I'm not."

"See?" Derek smiled at her. "I knew that." He let go of her to unlock the car, and Meredith regarded him with narrowed eyes.

"You knew that," she said slowly.

She was silent as they climbed into the car. Only the soft click of seatbelts being buckled and the jingle of his keys kept him company, and he was about to give up on the idea and just drive them home when Meredith made what he was sure had to be the strangest noise he had ever heard. It was rife with exasperation and started out a little like a sigh, but it soon twisted with confusion and flailed in the air.

Her hand came down against her thigh with a smack. "Then what?" she snapped, cutting the sound short before he could question it. "If this isn't an attempt to get rid of Alex and Izzie, and this isn't an attempt to seduce me, then what is it? Because we just spent all day at the hospital, and I have exactly ten hours and," she glanced at the clock on the dashboard, "twelve minutes before I have to come back, and I'm exhausted, and suddenly you want to do some fancy dinner thing. And how fancy are we talking here, anyway, because my shirt's wrinkled, my jeans have a hole in them, and the whole picture is just highly unpresentable."

"Meredith…"

She barreled on as if she hadn't heard him, her voice growing louder. "We can do it, if you want, because you are dating the new and improved Meredith who does things like fancy dinner whatevers with her boyfriend."

"_Meredith…_"

"All I'm saying is that I would like to know the catch now, beforehand, instead of having it sprung on me later. And don't say there isn't a catch because there is _always_ a catch. You are the master of catches, mister forty-eight uninterrupted hours." She grumbled the last bit in a voice only a few decibels louder than a whisper, and he couldn't decide if she was ribbing him or sharing or attempting something somewhere in between the two. At any rate, it was novel. They didn't talk about before, about the sex and mockery, about the exquisite torture of trying to hold onto her when she had been as elusive as a wisp of smoke. There were no long conversations about Rose. Part of being happy and healthy in the here and now seemed to hinge on not delving too deeply down into the dark months that lay behind them. It said that somewhere in the unwritten rules of their relationship, the ones they had wordlessly agreed upon every day in a thousand little ways. For _her_ sake. He'd thought the silence had been for her. But now she alluded to the wine country, and something twisted in his gut. He didn't know what to say back.

He finally settled for her name, and the three syllables rang out over the faint hum of the engine, "Meredith."

"What?" Meredith sank down in her seat, arms crossed over her chest, and fixed him with a very intense stare that fell just short of glaring.

Derek thumped his thumbs against the steering wheel, beating out a shaky, syncopated rhythm. It was too late to switch on the radio without looking like an asshole, but the silence was grating. He suddenly felt as tired as she had looked all day. "We don't have to go to dinner," he said at last. "We don't have to do anything you don't want to do." He pressed down on the break pedal, slowing them to a halt as the light turned red. She sat half in shadow and half in light, a streetlamp flooding the far side of her face in a wash of gold. He turned towards her, but the armrest between them was insurmountable. Derek cleared his throat. "I thought it could be fun to do something different for a change. Just us. But we don't have to. We'll go home."

"Green light," said Meredith flatly. Derek jerked his attention back to the road. The car behind them leaned on its horn. He pressed down on the gas and they lurched forward in a sudden spurt of speed. Time started to feel strange. It prickled against his skin, ticking off the seconds with an abstract sort of pain. Meredith was silent and beautiful and infuriating beside him. Some things never change. He stared straight ahead and tried not to care.

And then her hand was on his thigh and he was flooded with warmth. "I want steak," she said decisively.

Derek glanced over at her before turning back to watch the road. Her fingers fluttered against his leg, and there was comfort in her touch. "What?" he asked.

"I want steak, and I know we don't have any in the fridge. We're going to have to go to a restaurant." When he glanced back at her a second time she was smiling.

"Mer, it's okay. You don't have to—"

"I want to," she cut him off. "It'll be fun." He watched her pull the sun visor down out of the corner of his eye. She leaned forward, studying her reflection in the tiny rectangular mirror. "Just nowhere fancy," she added as she yanked her ponytail out and teased her fingers through her hair. "I look like crap."

Derek smiled and changed lanes. She was gorgeous.

It was drizzling when he pulled into the half empty lot behind the restaurant. The sign out front had proclaimed it to be Vince's Steakhouse. He'd never been there before, but if Meredith wanted steak, he was going to find her a steak. The car doors slammed shut and Derek pocketed his keys, about to make a quick dash to the entrance. But Meredith threw her head back towards the inky black sky, letting the raindrops land on her upturned face. She breathed in deeply as if the rain made her glad. He could only stare. This was the part of her that fascinated him. This was the part he was never sure he'd fully understand. Humans are roughly sixty percent water, but Meredith…she was more than that. She was water in too many ways.

"Let's go," he said at last, placing his hand on the small of her back. She looked down from the sky with a faint smile in her eyes, and let him shepherd her into the restaurant. The place had its fair share of character; the lighting was dim and yellow, and stubby candles flickered on each table from deep within votives of cloudy green glass. They were led to a booth tucked away in a far corner with seats of rust-colored leather and a tabletop of dark, heavily polished wood. Old black and white photographs tinted with age hung from the walls in thick black frames. Meredith rubbed her hands together over the scant warmth of the flickering candle and beamed at him when he wordlessly began to offer her his jacket.

"Nah, I'm good," she said with a shake of her head. She leaned forward conspiratorially, her elbows propping her up over the table. "So, what is this place?"

"Huh?"

"How'd you find it? Tell me the story."

"Oh. I've never been here before," he admitted. "But, you said you wanted steak, and this is a steakhouse. It should be able to meet all your steak related needs." He felt a rush of relief when she laughed out loud, shaking her head at him.

"So if this place is horrible, you're going to blame it on my needs?" she asked.

"Something like that," he agreed, and Meredith laughed again. He savored her smile.

Their waitress sidled up to the booth, menus in hand. She was tall and reedy, her hair hacked into short spikes and bleached platinum. "I'm Anna," she announced in a voice that sounded far too smooth and mature for the faint echoes of childhood that still clung to her in places. "I'll be your server tonight. Can I start you off with something to drink?"

They ordered wine and took their menus, and the silence that followed as they scanned them was surprisingly pleasant after the car ride. "So," said Meredith, peering at him over the top of her menu. "On a scale of one to ten, how horrible is it if we came here for my steak related needs and I don't order steak?"

"Hmmm…" Derek pressed his lips together, pretending to be deep in thought. "Thirty-four. Definitely a thirty-four."

Meredith exhaled heavily, sending the hair that framed her face fluttering outward. "But I want a cheeseburger," she said, her mouth curving up into a smile that he felt in the tips of his toes. "I _need_ a cheeseburger."

He tilted his head to the side and stared at her. "You have many needs."

"Yes," she said, matching his intensity. "I do." She wound her leg around his under the table. He lost his train of thought and drank her in, falling into the endless warmth of her gaze. She didn't seem so tired now. She didn't.

When Anna came back carrying their drinks, he was still staring at Meredith like some sort of lovesick fool. She laughed at him for ordering salad, and her eyes were taunting when she asked for a cheeseburger with fries. They fell right back into their usual banter while they waited for their food, and, when it came, Meredith bit into her cheeseburger like it was her last meal. The conversation halted as they started to eat, and the silence slowly turned solemn. The candlelight hid it some, but the tiredness she shook off with her smile came creeping back like the tide encroaching on the shore. He blamed the diary.

Derek cleared his throat, "So, tonight…you're not planning another marathon reading session, are you?"

The handful of french-fries that had been on their way to her mouth halted their journey abruptly. She held them poised in midair, her gaze ticking from them to him. "Oh. I'm too tired for that," she said. She stuffed her mouth with the fries and stared down at her plate, chewing far more violently then necessary.

"Mer?" he asked. When she looked up again, her eyes were a little more distant than they had been. She wasn't millions of miles away drowning in the bay, but that first familiar layer of separation had rolled in across her face. He speared a piece of lettuce with his fork, silently debating the finer points of a thousand questions. It was always a bit of a guessing game when it came to mentioning Ellis. He wanted to be there. He wanted to help. But it was her war to wage, not his. "Are you…" he began tentatively, setting his fork down on his plate, the lettuce still skewered on the silver tines. "Are you okay reading it?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Her voice was flat – a challenge. "She's just my mother."

"Except she's not just your mother," said Derek. He reached across the table and caught her hand with his, weaving their fingers together so she couldn't pull away. "We both know that."

Meredith glared down at their entwined hands, but she didn't try to wriggle free from his grasp. Her lips moved slightly, as if she was trying to work up the courage to speak and was playing it all out silently before adding her voice. She sighed and the sound was a quiet, fluttering thing.

"I spent half the day thinking I should just go home and burn it," she mumbled, not meeting his eyes. "Just set it on fire and never have to find out what she's said about me. But, the other half of the day, I'll I could think about was reading it. I should face the past."

The last sentence wavered like a question, but she didn't look to him for the answer. She just lifted her cheeseburger with her free hand, and took another gaping bite. Derek rubbed his thumbs over her knuckles. This was his fault. He was the one who had found the diary. He was the one who had dug up her past. He should have something to suggest, but, as much as he wanted to, he couldn't stand in her shoes for this. There was no point of comparison. If it was his mother's diary, he wouldn't be sitting there with fear in his eyes. He knew exactly what he would find; memories of when he and his sisters were all little and their father was alive, memories so brilliantly colored with happiness that they would transport him back through time, then there would be the cold grief that surrounded his father's death, clouds of loss and heartache and misery, but underneath it all, his mother's determination and her love for him and his sisters. They would be okay because her children would be happy and loved despite their loss; she would allow for no other possibility. Her love for him would pour off the page. There was no doubt in his mind. There was no point of comparison.

"Derek," said Meredith. Her voice broke through his thoughts and he nodded. "Stop looking at me like that."

He started to smile. "Like what?"

"Like I'm an MRI. Like I'm some brain you're about to cut into." His smile faltered.

"I'm not—"

"You are, which is pathetic because I'm your girlfriend, and we're in a restaurant on a _date_. And there are candles. You should be looking at me like you're trying to guess what color panties I have on."

He recognized it for what it was; her silent plea to stop talking about the diary. Sex always was her favorite way to change the subject. He let it go, and his eyes dropped from her face to dip lower, lingering over the way her breasts pulled at her shirt, straining the fabric ever so slightly. The table hid the rest of her body, but he could imagine. Oh, could he imagine. Black? Red? Some printed pattern thing? The possibilities were endless. He raked his eyes up and down her body, and when he finally let his gaze lock with hers again her eyes were bright and hypnotizing, her cheeks ever so slightly pink.

"That was inappropriate," she said, but her voice was low and breathy and it made her words a lie.

Derek just grinned, his chest swelling with pride. "Black. They're black, aren't they?"

Meredith looked down at her plate. "Shut up."

"Ahh," he crowed, leaning back and rubbing his hands together. "I'm right."

She raised an eyebrow, tossing him a glance from over her shoulder. "You're right," she said. She glowed in the candlelight. He had cheered her up.

He would never guess she was the same woman who sat huddled on the bathroom floor at three in the morning if he hadn't seen it with his own eyes. She had two sides to herself; the golden girl from back before Addison, the one who had saved him with a smile and drove him out of his mind night after night, and the other one, the one he didn't like to name, who was made of glass but sunk like lead, filled to the brim with secrets and sorrow. He had known one and then the other. The strange overlap of the two that she'd become was equal parts comforting and disconcerting. She was still smiling, popping fries into her mouth and licking the leftover ketchup from her fingertips. She looked happy.

_Depressed. _

_She was fucking depressed, man._

"Are you happy?" The question came spilling out before he could stop it.

Meredith blinked and pursed her lips, "Hmm?"

"Are you happy?" he repeated. The words felt treacherous and his hands turned clammy. He wiped them on his jeans under the table.

"Yeah." She shrugged, tilting her head from side to side. "I know I made a big deal out of going out to eat, but this was fun." She dipped another fry into the swirl of ketchup on her plate and grinned at him. "And it sure beats leftover pizza."

"No. That's not what I meant. I want to know…" He stared down at his plate. It was porcelain. White. Like that freaking bathtub. The words he wanted to say felt like putty on his tongue. The seconds ticked on, and he could feel Meredith grow tense across from him. She was silent as the grave, and he stared at his plate some more. Anna appeared out of nowhere, a tall, pale wisp at his elbow.

"How is everything?" she asked. "Good, I hope."

"Yeah, it's good," said Meredith. He forced himself to look up, and when he did he saw the confusion etched across her brow.

"Very good," he said stiffly. "Meredith, did you want dessert?" She was chewing on her lower lip, and she gave a tiny shake of her head. "Okay, I'll take the check then, when you get a chance."

"Right away," said Anna. She leaned forward and picked up his empty plate. Meredith's had a smattering of fries left on it, and Anna's hand hovered uncertainly. "Are you still working on that?"

Meredith just shook her head, nudging it away with her fingers. "No. I'm done."

"Great!" Anna scooped up the plate. "I'll be right back with that check then."

Neither of them said a word as the waitress pivoted on her heel and walked away. Meredith was looking at him expectantly. She didn't seem annoyed, just curious and a little uncertain. "Go on," she said quietly.

He sighed, finally meeting her eyes. "Are you _happy_?" He said it again, trying to give the word all the meaning it held in his mind. "Generally speaking, I mean. You're happy, right?"

"Yes, of course." She laughed, and the sound was nervous and shivering. Or maybe he just thought it was. She was still smiling though, and that was something. "Generally speaking, I am." He nodded. She twined a strand of her hair around her finger, coiling it tight. "What's this about, Derek?"

_You can say anything to me._

He swallowed hard. "Would you tell me if you weren't happy?" Like before. If you wanted to die. If it happened again.

"I think you can tell when I'm in a bad mood," she said carefully. Derek smoothed his hand over the tabletop, watching it instead of her. She didn't get it. Or she didn't really want to understand. Her hand clamped down over his, stilling the back and forth motion of his palm. He looked up. "I'll spell it out for you the next time I'm feeling pissy, if that's what you really want." She said it with a grin, teasing him, but something about her seemed faraway again and he thought in a flash that she understood the real question. She just wouldn't play along for him.

He couldn't make himself ask the real question, and she wasn't about to answer it if he didn't spell it out first.

But she was sitting there, smiling at him and holding his hand. They ate dinner together now in restaurants with candlelight and wine and carefully prepared rolls of silverware. A few months ago she wouldn't even sit with him in the cafeteria. He paid the check and held her close all the way back to the car. It was progress.


	3. Author's Note: Rating Change

**Author's Note: Rating Change**

Hi everyone! Sorry to be posting without a new update, but that's what this author's note is about really. Chapter 3 will be up tomorrow (Yay! I'm currently editing it right now), but once I post it I'll have to change the rating on the story from T to M. While editing, I've come to the conclusion that a lot of what happens in this chapter is simply too mature to fly under the story's current rating.

Anyway, the purpose of this AN is to avoid confusion! Because confusion is a bad, bad thing. I want to give a heads up to anyone who might be finding this story simply by looking at the Grey's stories rated K through T. I wouldn't want you to think I've abandoned LitToS – I definitely haven't! But, starting tomorrow, you will need to look under stories rated M in order to locate it. I also want to give a heads up to any readers who have no interest in reading sex scenes, as you may wish to avoid the next chapter (or the story altogether).

So yes, that's about all there is to say for now. If you have any questions/comments/complaints about the rating change, feel free to contact me. I'm sorry for any confusion it may cause, but I honestly had no idea the chapter was going to turn out like this before I started writing! However, I do think it will be good for the story, and I know I'm excited to write what happens next.

Look for Chapter 3 coming your way tomorrow!

Thanks for reading,

Morgen


	4. Chapter 3

_So, here's the promised update! I'm sorry if the rating switch caused any confusion. I had a lot of fun writing this chapter – it's another long one. And it has lots of Mer/Der in it to make up for the utter lack of Mer/Der time we got during last week's episode. So yeah, that's about it for now. Many thanks to everyone who has taken the time to review. I really appreciate hearing your thoughts/feedback on the story! Enjoy._

-----

"So, are we doing this or what?" asked Cristina. She ripped open a bag of chips and leaned back against the wall, pulling her feet up onto the gurney.

Meredith frowned. "We will. Just…give me a moment." The diary lay in her lap; it had been four days since she'd last looked inside it from her seat on the bathroom floor. Now the heavy black cover seemed suddenly sinister. She reached out, slowly stroking the length of the spine with one finger.

Cristina's impatience was tangible. She was chewing her chips vigorously, as if racing to the bottom of the bag might somehow speed Meredith along.

"Well, hurry up," she said when Meredith continued to trace the borders of the diary with her fingertip. "Two is currently unsupervised, and that's tantamount to a death wish for whatever patient stumbles across his path. If he kills someone because I'm sitting here watching you pet a book, I'll kill you!"

Meredith looked up and rolled her eyes. "Cristina…"

"What? You have a perfectly nice trailer. Why don't we just wait and do it there?"

"I already told you! I'm going crazy here. Besides, if we go to the trailer, Derek will notice."

"So you're hiding dead mommy from McDreamy now?"

"Not hiding, just…" She pursed her lips together, trying to ignore the little twinge of guilt that coursed through her. "He'll want to talk about it," she muttered.

"Oh, how scary," said Cristina.

"Or he won't want to talk about it…I can't tell lately." Meredith shook her head. "I mean, first he takes me out to dinner. To _dinner_, Cristina, like at a restaurant with candles and waiters and elaborate menus. And then the next night, he suddenly wanted us to order in food and watch movies together on the couch. Because apparently that's what people do when they cohabitate. Then last night, well…last night we both got off late, and so we just went to Joe's. But then there was sex. Lots and lots of sex. Actually, that's a lot more like us, but—"

"Meredith!" snapped Cristina. Her eyes looked very bright, shining with a sharp exasperation. "Enough already. I am not your day planner. Record all your precious moments with McDreamy somewhere else."

Meredith sighed. "It's just I think he's trying to distract me," she said. "I don't even have time to _think_ about the diary with his marathon list of after school activities, let alone read it. So I think he must want me to forget about it, you know? Except sometimes I'll say something, and then he'll give me this look. And it's not the McDreamy look. It's a different one. It's intense and kind of," she waved her hand aimlessly in front of her, "searching, I guess. Like I'm supposed to share something about dead mommy." She exhaled loudly, pushing the hair away from her face. The diary was resting against her leg, and she stared down at it, her voice growing softer. "The dead mommy stuff gets ugly though, and we're happy now. He doesn't need to see all the ugly." She clasped her hands together and gave a small, determined nod. "So, no trailer. We're flying under the radar here."

Her words were met with silence, and she glanced over at Cristina. She was staring down at the bag of chips, scanning the list of ingredients.

"Cristina!"

"Hmm…what?" Cristina looked up.

"Were you even listening to me?"

"And your problems with McDreamy? Nope."

Meredith frowned at her. "But don't you think it's a little weird?" she asked. It seemed weird. Derek had always been pretty laid back after work; now he apparently made elaborate plans. Every night.

"That you're hiding the diary from him?" said Cristina. "Yeah, a little. It's only surgical stuff."

"Not anymore," muttered Meredith. She splayed her palm against the front cover of the diary. It looked so small and unassuming beneath her fingers. She swallowed hard. "I'm in it now."

Cristina cocked her head to the side, her eyebrows shooting up. "Really? About time. What's dead mommy got to say?"

"I don't know. I, uh…I saw my name and then I stopped reading. And now I can't look; I'm not a total sadist." She held the diary out, trying to ignore the way her fingers trembled. "You need to read it."

Cristina wiped the grease from her hands onto the gurney and took the book from Meredith. "Okay. Do you want me to paraphrase?"

"No…just read it out loud."

"Where do I start?"

"The page is turned down," said Meredith. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, not liking the slick cold dread that was hiking its way up from her gut to fill her.

_That's the problem with Meredith._

The longer she had put off reading what came after that sentence, the more the possibilities had mutated inside her mind, twisting and snarling into something hideous. Menacing. She could barely open the diary anymore.

"Does it look bad?" she asked in a hushed voice.

"You know, maybe you should be reading this with your shrink."

"I told you already," snapped Meredith. "I'm done with therapy. I've been fixed."

"Right…"

"I have!" Meredith twisted around on the gurney so she was facing Cristina. "You don't think I'm done?"

"No," said Cristina flatly. "You're still dating Derek."

"You know, it'd be really nice if you'd try not hating him. Just for a little while."

Cristina shrugged. "Fine. He's fantastic. Whatever." She crunched on another chip. "Do you want me to read this or not?"

Meredith sucked in a deep breath of air. She felt suddenly cold. "Yes," she whispered. "Start with, _'That's the problem with Meredith.'_"

"Ooh, intriguing," said Cristina. She dragged her finger across the page, searching for the spot. "Right, here we go." She cleared her throat loudly. "'_That's the problem with Meredith. She's always stuck in her own head. Louisa said…'_" Cristina paused, looking up. "Who's Louisa?"

"She was my nanny for awhile," said Meredith. "Back when we still lived in Seattle." She hadn't thought of Louisa in a good twenty years, but her mind conjured up a hazy memory of the woman's face. She'd been a gentle, grandmotherly sort, always setting out a cookie and a glass of milk for Meredith after she'd picked her up from kindergarten. "She was nice," said Meredith quietly.

Cristina nodded, returning to the open diary. _"'Louisa said the school sent home a note about how she doesn't talk to any of the other children. She only wants to play with her imaginary friend.' _ You had an imaginary friend?"

"Yeah." Meredith felt her cheeks flush slightly and she shook her head, a tiny smile turning the corners of her lips. "Hector. He was seven. And a surgeon. It was all incredibly impressive. He was very busy, but he never got paged anywhere when I wanted to play." Her smile turned wry, and she snorted softly. "Apparently he wasn't a very good surgeon."

"I never would've guessed you had an imaginary friend."

Meredith shrugged. "For awhile, yeah." She rocked forward anxiously. "Keep going."

"'_Thatch seems to think that's just fine. He's upset I told Meredith not to play with this fake friend of hers anymore, which is ridiculous. No good can come from her living in her head all day. She'll alienate everyone.'_" Cristina paused and looked up at Meredith, narrowing her eyes as if she was studying her carefully. "So you had an imaginary friend, Mer. It's no big deal. Lots of kids have those."

"Yeah…" Meredith ran her hands slowly over her scrubs. "I know. Really, considering all the things she could've said, this isn't so bad. I already knew she hated Hector." She laughed, but the sound was shaky.

"You did?"

Meredith quirked an eyebrow. "Well, yeah. I was there when she told me to stop playing with him." She chewed absently on her lip, weaving and unweaving her fingers together. Memories of childhood were dark and cloudy things she didn't like to revisit, but she could still remember that day. Ellis had been mad, scolding her while on the way out the door to the hospital. Thatcher had told her it was okay, that she could still play with Hector, but she knew it wasn't okay. Hector had to go. She'd told him goodbye on the playground and made him promise he wouldn't come back. Then she had hid under the slide and cried until it was time to go inside again. She'd hoped he would come back anyway, but he hadn't. And then they'd moved to Boston, and she knew he would never find her there. Boston. The word pierced her brain like a bullet hole. _ Boston_. The dates hadn't really registered when the entries had been purely surgical, but they were close, so close to the day everything fell apart. Kindergarten. She was five. Saying goodbye to Hector. Time was a funny thing when she tried to look back, but that couldn't have been more than a few months before her one and only carousel ride, before the night Thatcher just didn't come back. Before the blood on the kitchen floor.

"Meredith? Mer?" A hand waved in front of her face. She blinked, starting as she was jerked from her thoughts. "Are you listening?"

"Yeah, yeah," said Meredith quietly. She glanced over at Cristina. Her friend was regarding her as if she might be some sort of bizarre lab specimen. It fit; she felt mutated and wrong. "What's it say next?"

"No, I have to go." Cristina thrust her vibrating pager under Meredith's nose. "That's what I've been telling you. We'll read more later, okay?"

"Right…later." The journal was dropped into her lap, and Cristina was hurrying off down the hall before Meredith could even put two and two together. Later. She could read it later. Her hair was getting in her face again, and she shoved at it roughly before yanking it into a ponytail using the elastic she wore around her wrist. This was all okay. She might be only twenty pages or so away from Boston, but it was all okay. She smoothed her hand over the diary's moleskin cover. It seemed to hum against her skin, begging her to read. It was a freaking Pandora's box.

Meredith drew in a slow, shaky breath and flipped around on the gurney, laying flat on her stomach. She opened the diary again, quickly finding the now familiar dog-eared page. Her eyes scanned back and forth, back and forth, searching for where Cristina had left off.

_No good can come from her living in her head all day._ _She'll alienate everyone. It shouldn't be that hard for her to talk to the other kids in her class. This immature fantasy crap is unattractive. Meredith is old enough to face reality now. But I tell her that, and suddenly I'm the bad guy. I'm only looking out for her. She's too closed off. She tries her hardest to be unlovable. If she's not careful, one day she'll get her wish._

_I performed a laparoscopic cholecystectomy today…_

Meredith blinked in disbelief, trying to make sense of the sudden switch from the problem of Hector to surgery. She flipped quickly through the rest of the entry. It contained an incredibly detailed description of the gallbladder removal that went on for several pages, but there wasn't another mention of Meredith. Ellis just changed paths abruptly. Meredith tried to focus on the words, tried to glean some knowledge from dead mommy, but they kept blurring in and out. She slammed the diary shut and sat up, wiping the back of her hand across her eyes. Her cheeks were slick with unexpected tears. Meredith sniffled roughly, irritated with herself. The hallway was empty, but she cast a guilty look in both directions before hopping down. She scooped up her lab coat and the diary and clutched them to her chest. She had to get back to work.

She didn't pass anyone important on her way to the residents' locker room, and the room itself was blessedly empty. Meredith hung her lab coat from a hook in her cubby. She felt overheated, almost feverish. She wasn't about to wear it. The diary was chucked unceremoniously into the cubby as well. It landed splayed against her boots.

Meredith stalked over to the mirror, staring at her reflection. Her cheeks were flushed, and not a gentle pink. A harsh slap of red stained both sides of her face. Her eyes still looked watery. She rubbed them with the heels of her hands and a single tear slipped from the corner of her eye. She wiped it away, swiping at it like it was something hateful.

_She tries her hardest to be unlovable._

Meredith puffed her cheeks out, exhaling in a loud whoosh of air. She had to get back to work.

-----

Her day was a horrible thing. Her mind was ensnared in a bitter place where Ellis's words recycled themselves over and over again. It left her with little room to concentrate on the medicine. By eight am, she had misplaced several charts. By ten, she'd missed twice when starting an IV that should have been an easy stick. At noon, she was narrowly saved from prescribing an incorrect dosage by a question from one of her interns. She was late to surgery, berated by Bailey, and, on top of that, managed to accidentally contaminate herself and was forced to go scrub in again like she was some unwitting med student. All that was missing was another internal organ dropped on the freaking floor. Now, Meredith was standing on the bridge, leaning against the railing as she seethed at her own stupidity. The voice inside her head sounded a lot like Ellis.

She didn't notice Derek until he was right beside her, stepping out of the busy flow of foot traffic to lean against the railing.

"Hey," he offered.

Meredith jerked her head up. "Hey."

"Are you okay?" asked Derek, touching her elbow. "You look a little distracted."

She shrugged. "Yeah, I don't know…"

Distracted.

That was what she needed. A distraction. Something to clear her head. She shifted closer to him. "Are you busy now?"

"Not really. It's a pretty light day," said Derek. "Why? What's up?"

Meredith grabbed his hand by way of answer, tugging him all the way across the bridge and down the nearest hall.

"Mer?" She could hear the confusion in his voice, mixed with a note of amusement. "Where are we going?" He smirked, his body angling towards hers. "Are you kidnapping me?" She glanced up and tried to smile, but Ellis's voice was loud and haunting inside her mind. The smile barely made it to the corners of her mouth. She blinked rapidly, desperate to keep even the hint of tears at bay. "Meredith…" Derek's voice changed completely as he caught sight of her face. He pulled his hand from hers to catch her by the shoulders, halting their breakneck journey down the hallway. "What's going on?"

She shook her head, biting down hard on her lip. The diary wasn't something she wanted to discuss. Her day wasn't something she wanted to discuss. Her eyes darted back and forth along the hallway, zeroing in on a door to an on-call room that rested ajar. "Just come with me," she said, slipping out of his grasp and through the open door.

In the next moment, he'd followed her through. "Meredith, are you—"

She threw herself at him, kissing him fiercely and cutting off the rest of his question. He kissed her back, but his hands came up to grasp the sides of her face, and he slowly broke the kiss. "Hey. Talk to me," he said gently. "What's wrong?"

Meredith shook her head. "Don't." She leaned in and kissed him again. The door still hung open, and they stood in the patch of light that poured in from the hall. The rest of the room was in shadows; she hadn't bothered with the light switch. They didn't need to see for this.

"Mer…"

"Please. _Don't,_" she said more forcefully.

She kicked the door shut with her foot, and leaned into Derek again to find his mouth. Everything was welling up on the inside, ravenous and wild. Her mind was a child's drawing; all the colors spilling outside the lines. She wanted to forget. She kissed him with her mouth wide open and her tongue against his, feeling his unease in the way his hand lay too lightly against the small of her back. She fumbled for the lock on the door and twisted it, bolting them in and the world out. The click was satisfying, but nothing else was. Derek wasn't cooperating. He still held her too lightly. Kissed her too softly. He was supposed to hold her like a lifeline. Kiss her like water in the desert. She felt the questions building within him, questions that hung around them and made the air heavy. He was curious and concerned; he was being gentle with her. No. No. No. A tiny whine hitched its way past her open mouth. The voice wouldn't stop if Derek wouldn't… There was a cliff she wanted to fall from, but she couldn't unless he shoved her first. Never gentle. She hated gentle. Meredith fisted her hands in his hair and ground her hips against him until she felt him begin to react. She grabbed him through the thin fabric of his scrub pants and found him hard in her hand. He groaned and she swallowed the sound with her kiss. Their clothes were unbearable. She wanted him now. Now, now, now. There was no such thing as patience; foreplay was stupid. This was supposed to be the easy part. Action and reaction; do A to B to produce C. He was at the ties to her scrubs now and he plucked at them like harp strings; the song drove her insane.

He stopped kissing her and left her mouth bereft. But then his teeth found her earlobe and his breath spilled over her hot, hot, hot. Her insides curled with want. "Mer…" The sound was delirium.

"Yes." _Yes. Yes. Yes._

"What's wrong?" he asked, and his voice was the same deep, ragged one he used to shred her senses and tell her just what he was going to do to her, just how he was going to take her, take her. Take her. "Tell me," he said.

One of his hands swept upward while the other plunged down, and her mind went blank with buzzing as it tried to split to follow them both. "Nothing," she stammered. "I'm fine. I'm…" _Need._ I need you.

He shoved at the her bra, pushing it away so the underwire cut into the top half of her breasts and left her nipples free to prickle in the sudden sharp cold of the open air. "Liar," he said, and then his thumb brushed against her nipple and it pebbled at his touch.

"What?" she gasped, not following. The weight of his body pushed her backwards and she slammed into the wall just hard enough to send her breath leaking away. She clutched at him, hands scrambling to find the skin beneath his shirt.

His mouth was on her neck. Her collarbone. Her jaw line. It traveled everywhere, warm and wet and all that there was. But then his lips were at her ear again, and his voice filled her head. "Something's bothering you," he said.

"No." Yes. What? He had a hand between her legs, panties pushed away and his fingers teasing her. He went clockwise and her mind whirred. She shifted her hips, jerking towards him, trying to get more than all of this not quite there. This freaking _almost_.

"Or something _was _bothering you," said Derek. He sounded smug, and she blinked at him through the haze of want and need and _please_. Her top was bunched under her armpits and her scrubs had fallen pooled around her ankles. She felt like a shattered pane of glass, flushed and wet and senseless from his hands. Derek looked composed enough to operate. Unfair. He scraped the inside of her with the edge of one fingernail, and squeezed a small, strangled sound from her lips. "Hmm…yes, definitely _was,_" he said.A grin was curving across his face, and he looked so damn pleased with himself. So arrogant. Smug. Fuckable. _God… _She reached for him, her fingertips just millimeters from his waistband when he pushed her hands away. "No." His voice was compelling, and her hands fell back to hit the wall. "You want me to make you forget it," he said. "I know you." Her skin hummed with his words as he spoke to her navel and then slowly told each and every rib. "I know you, Meredith." His mouth closed around her breast and he sucked on her nipple, pulling her into him. She shivered against the wall, against him. He knew her. Her skin was hot where his mouth was, only to turn cold when he lifted his lips away. Even in the darkness she could make out the glow of his eyes boring into her. They burned like brands; all he had to do was stare, and she felt it on her skin. He wanted something, and it wasn't to see her come. He was coaxing it from her like a needle pulling blood from a vein. She knew he was, and if she could just _think_ she'd figure it out. What did he want? What did he? What did he… But he caught her nipple with his teeth again, and then his tongue. His teeth. His tongue. His teeth. The pulse between her legs was a jackhammer. She was blind and dripping. One hand was lost deep inside of her and the other one palmed her breast. There was no thinking; every cell in her body was screaming. He knew her. She reached for him again, but he caught both her hands with one of his. There was the wall again. Her arms hit it as he swept them up and back, pinning them above her head with one hand looped around her wrists.

Derek leaned against her, pressing her between the cold indifference of the wall and the warmth of his body. His scrubs were rough and scratchy against her bare skin. Every cell had a pulse. Every neuron was senseless and starving with want. His fingers were barely in her anymore. Not enough. She could feel him hard and ready and pinned against her stomach. But he wasn't letting her. He wasn't… So stingy.

"Derek," she gasped. "I need…" Her hips bucked, trying to find him. Her arms were still his prisoners. "Please. Let me. Please."

"No," he said. The word slid down the column of her neck as his mouth caught her there. Frustration filled the tiny gaps between them, and she wasn't sure if it was hers or his or both. "You want me to make you forget, and then we'll go back to work like it was nothing, and I won't have a damn clue about anything you feel," said Derek. His voice was rough like sandpaper against her skin, and she knew then some of the frustration was his. She stared at him wide eyed and pinned to the wall. The want dulled from a scalpel's edge to a butter knife as her mind scrambled for a foothold on coherency. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. He wanted to talk about serious issues now, while his thumb was resting a millimeter away from her clit. Not possible. As if he could read her mind, he shifted his thumb ever so slightly to the left until it hit just _there_ and then he pressed down. Coherency dwindled and slipped away. As if he could read her mind.

"What…" Are you doing to me?

When he kissed her, her head lolled back to hit the wall with a thunk. "I'm not that guy anymore," said Derek. "_We_ aren't that anymore."

"So you're just going to torture me instead?" Her voice shook and her knees felt wobbly. She wanted him to lift her.

"Do you want me to do this?" he growled as he slipped a finger back inside of her, curling it forward, forward, forward. His thumb rubbed her in endless, practiced circles. He worked her into a desperate, panting mess, and she ground into the palm of his hand, whimpering.

"Yes. Yes. Don't stop. Don't…"

But he pulled his hand from her, and she was left flailing hopelessly. Drowning in a sea of cold wanting. Empty and throbbing. "Derek," she whined.

"If you want me to do this, tell me what you want to forget. Tell me what's wrong." He let go off her wrists and his hand snaked behind her head, yanking her ponytail out. The elastic fell to the floor, and her hair spilled freely forward.

She leaned towards him, shaky and gasping. She was empty. His fault. She craved him. Their foreheads touched, and all she could see in the dark was his eyes. They fed into her own. Tunnel vision. "Tell you," she echoed.

"Tell me, Meredith." He kissed her softly, and whispered his words into her open mouth. "Say it."

Meredith ran her hands over his shoulders and down his back, feeling the muscles held taut beneath her palms. He would hold her up. "I…" Her voice was weak like a newborn thing, and she kissed him back. He knew her. He would hold her up. "I was reading it again," she whispered.

"The diary?"

"Yes." He peeled her top off, and his own followed hers to the floor. His hands slipped between her back and the wall. He held her. His skin was her skin. There was no inbetween. She closed her eyes. "Apparently I was a disappointment even when I was five."

Derek hugged her to him, held her close. "Meredith, no…"

"To her I was," whispered Meredith. "And now I can't get her voice out of my head. I can't get it out, and I'm making all these stupid mistakes. I can't concentrate." She squeezed him tightly, her hands traveling across the endless plane of his back. "Make it go away."

"Okay," he said.

He traced the outline of her mouth with his thumbnail, and she parted her lips. Her teeth scraped his skin, biting down on the pad of his thumb. She pulled him into her mouth, sucking, tasting. It wasn't enough; forgetfulness was too far away again.

_She tries her hardest to be unlovable_.

She stepped out of her shoes, her scrubs, her panties. There was nothing left to shed.

_If she's not careful, one day she'll get her wish._

Meredith shoved Derek's scrubs down, winding her hand around him. She loved when he was hard. When he wanted her. Unlovable. At least he _wanted_ her. "Derek?" She stroked his length like a feather, suddenly shy. He pushed forward against her palm. "You love me?"

"Yes," he said, and the word was low and guttural, rumbling like thunder as he dipped two fingers into her again. "Of course."

Unlovable.

"Tell me that you love me." Her voice shook. Did he understand how ugly she was on the inside? Did he? "_Please_," she begged. The word broke like a glass slipping from her hand, and he had her in his arms before the sound died away. He lifted her up high, caught her between the wall and himself. Her legs snaked their familiar path around his waist, ankles locking together. Jigsaw pieces. She felt him so close to her, hard and thick and ready to plunge, but he wasn't pushing through. He wasn't filling her. He just held her there above him, suspended on high like a star in the sky. Like he worshipped her.

"I love you," he said.

This was crack. Not the diary, but this. The words were a drug. "Tell me again," she whispered fiercely.

Derek kissed her. "I love you."

Loveable. Her. Loveable. "Again," she pleaded.

He loosened his grip on her back, and let her sink down slowly, bit by bit. He filled her inch by torturous inch until he was buried deep inside her. Did he understand how ugly she was on the inside? _Maybe_. She rocked against him, her fingernails scraping hungry lines across his shoulder blades.

"I love you," he promised. His voice sounded as hurt as her own. He thrust into her hard, filling her, filling her, filling her. Love. Love. Love. Desire metamorphosed into something greater, something bigger. Her heart unfurled like a butterfly's wings.

"Derek…" Her breath hitched, and she gasped into his mouth. This was like… _Then._ "Do you remember the night in the water?" she asked. He stilled within her, and she was full.

He cupped her face with his hand, and his voice was curiously strained and vehement. "I'll never forget it."

She curved her body towards him, and their foreheads touched. The water flashed behind her eyes. "I want that," she said. "I want this to be like that."

"There's no water here," said Derek, nipping at her jaw line, teasing.

"You know what I mean," she hissed.

"I know what you mean."

He pulled out to the tip, emptied her like water down the drain. She groaned and dug her heels into his back. She clenched at nothing; he wasn't there. She was still suspended above him, like that one insane moment before her back had hit the dock. When the stars had encircled them. Everything stilled, waiting for the freefall. She wanted. She needed. Love. Love. Love. The way he looked at her was fierce. Possessive. She was his.

_Make love to me, Derek._

She hoped he understood.

Then he plunged into her to the hilt, and the world began to spin again.

The wall disappeared from behind her as Derek carried her across the room. He was all that held her up. He had shot her from the water like a rocket. His feet had touched. Hers hadn't. She had first loved him then. That night in the water. Before the wife.

Her back hit the bed. The dock. The bed. Derek loomed over her and into her. Again and again. She clenched around him and clawed at his hair. Her fingers tangled there, and she held on tight. The bed groaned beneath them, surrendering to their rhythm. It was a slow climb, but it wasn't gentle. They never were. Not even that night in the water. Perhaps, especially then. Derek swooped a hand in behind each knee and pushed her legs back up and over. Her body bent in two like a folding chair, and her kneecaps brushed against the mattress somewhere not far from her shoulders. The angle changed when he rammed in again, and her breath hitched in her chest.

"Derek…" She gasped and tried to think, but there was only feeling. The world was a camera lens gone out of focus. Love. Love. Love. He was filling her again and again. Closer and closer. She licked her way up his neck, tasting skin and salt and sweat. When they kissed it was a crush of desire, peeling her apart. Derek's tongue was in her mouth and she sucked on it, pulling him into her. His moan reverberated off the roof of her mouth and made her body hum. White noise roared inside her head. His face hovered above her own, so close she thought their eyelids might touch if they blinked. She'd loved him in the water. She loved him now. She clasped his cheeks between her hands, keeping his face a breath away from her own. Each thrust was long and slow and scraping. She thought she might break in two. There was a cliff, and it wasn't far. "Derek, please," she hissed, arching back into the pillows as he drove through her. She rocked her hips up to meet him, to bring him deeper. "Harder," she said.

He complied, and the spring in her belly coiled tighter. He had her legs pinned. She was crushed beneath him over and over again as he ran her through. Crushed. Delirious. There was a cliff, and the view was unbelievable.

"Derek," she screeched, shouted, cried. She had no idea how her voice came out. It was just noise. "Derek. Derek. Derek," she said. There was a cliff.

She fell.

He followed her over into bliss. When he collapsed against her with a low, sated groan, her body was still twitching, alive with tiny aftershocks of pleasure. Her mind was a vague and empty thing. Derek rolled to lie beside her, and without his hands there, her legs dropped like rocks to the mattress. Her eyelids dipped down halfway to closing. Everything was so still, just a whisper and a promise. There was no better moment. Her hands wandered aimlessly over Derek's body, toying with the hair on his chest, outlining his pectorals with the tip of her finger, feeling the scrape of his stubble across the palm of her hand. She knew every freckle, every crease, every scar. She knew it all with her eyes closed. Derek pulled her closer still, murmuring her name into her hair as he rolled her over to lie on top of his chest. She curled around him, her face cradled at his neck. Their skin was slick and warm and salty. The room was perfect. The world was safe.

She was very loved.

The thought brought a giggle to her lips, the tiniest bubble of laughter bursting forth.

"Mmm?" Derek tilted towards her.

Meredith shook her head, and her nose brushed against the side of his neck. She could feel his pulse under his skin. Laughter came back again, and she kissed him sloppily right over his carotid artery, letting it thump against her lips as she laughed.

"Not so unlovable now," she mused, whispering it to the pillows and his pulse.

Derek had been petting her back, drawing long, lazy circles from her tailbone to her shoulder blades, but now his hands stilled. "She called you that?" His voice was grave and disbelieving.

"No. Not exactly," said Meredith. She kept her face tucked against his neck. It was easier to say things when she couldn't see him.

"Then what exactly?"

She drew in a shaky breath. "Um…"

"Meredith, what?" asked Derek, speaking soft and low, his mouth near to her ear. He wound his arms tightly around her back as if to keep her there. No running.

_Do you see what happens? I say things like that, and you fight the urge to run in the opposite direction._

Her mother had been right. She had been unlovable then, hadn't she? She was trying so hard not to be that Meredith anymore; she didn't want to be ugly on the inside. The ugly Meredith would run, scrambling out of bed and into her scrubs with a stammered apology on her lips as she opened the door. Meredith pressed her face deeper into the pillow. Her voice was a muffled distant thing, but she spoke. "That I try to be unlovable, and one day I probably will be."

Derek grunted, rolling her over so they lay side by side and face to face. She couldn't hide against his neck anymore. He stroked the side of her face, searching out her eyes with his own. She stared just past him, avoiding his gaze to study his earlobe instead. She could feel how much he wanted her to look at him, but she couldn't do it. She wasn't running. That had to be enough.

"Try as hard as you want," he said quietly. "You'll never be unlovable."

Meredith's breath hitched. She stared at his earlobe like a hawk. Derek sighed and pushed the hair back from her face. Slowly, he combed his fingers through the strands, lifting them up, up, up until he reached the ends. She watched out of the corner of her eye as her hair slipped through his fingers to rain down against her shoulder. Did he know how ugly she was on the inside? Would he take it back if he did? She bit her lip and met his eyes. He smiled at her. It felt like an experiment.

"I almost left," she whispered. Derek's eyebrows quirked together into a frown, a question. Curiosity. "The night in the water. Before we… I almost left."

Understanding spilled across his face. "I know."

"You do? You _did? _Then?"

He pulled her closer and pressed his lips to her forehead. "Yeah."

Meredith wriggled out of his grasp, propping herself up on an elbow. She frowned down at him. "But if you knew, why weren't you mad when I came back?"

Derek shrugged. "I was just glad you did."

"Seriously?"

Derek flopped onto his back, flinging his arm out as he sighed. The sound was heavy and worn down. "Mer, I was keeping secrets from you. Big ones. They left me very little room to judge."

"Oh…" They were silent for a long time, not quite touching. Finally, Meredith reached out and splayed her hand against his chest. "So Addison was my get out of jail free card?"

Derek snorted, letting out a short bark of laughter. "If you want to look at it that way."

Meredith smiled and slid her hand from his chest up towards his neck. She leaned into him, pulling him close. Her arms twined around his shoulders. Her leg hitched over his waist. They were tangled close together. He had known, and he still loved her. She would make this moment last forever if she could. She closed her eyes and lived in the silent, perfect space between them.

"Meredith?" Derek's voice shook her from the cocoon she had spun for herself. There was something heavy to the way he said her name, something uncertain. It made her stomach clench, and she didn't know why. She nodded, but said nothing. "That night in the water…" he continued quietly. He pressed his palm against her shoulder, molding his hand around it, taking its shape. He stroked her skin with his thumb, and she heard his breathing change and grow shallow. They lingered in silence.

Meredith swallowed hard, finally prompting him, "Yeah?"

He exhaled loudly; it made her hair flutter. "You could swim like a fish."

In that moment, she was frozen. She felt the weight of accusation in his statement. But they had talked about the water; he knew she'd come back changed. Did he really still care? Were they really back there again? Meredith bit her lip, taking comfort in the tiny stabs of pain as her teeth squeezed her flesh. She had no words. She was a statue on the outside, her leg still locked over Derek's body, her fingers still clasped behind his neck. Motionless. So at odds with the whirlwind inside of her, the shapeless thoughts pounding her skull.

_I don't know if I want to keep trying to breathe for you._

Was she really still so unlovable?

The tunnel vision came back, and she saw only his eyes. Derek seemed equally entranced, but their eyes were heavy as they stared at each other. He said nothing more, as if all his energy was going into staring at her, funneling down into the depths behind her eyes. Meredith wondered what he was looking for. She wished she knew how to say beautiful things the way he did, so she could say them now and solve the silence. But all the thoughts in her head sounded broken and stuttering, and so she waited on him. The moments grew longer and their skin turned cold. Derek seemed very far away.

The sweat on her skin had slowly chilled, and when she shivered reflexively against him, Derek blinked. The distance fell away from his eyes and the darkness as well. He was right there beside her, and even though he sighed heavily, he smiled at her. Meredith smiled back. He leaned in and kissed her neck, her chin, her mouth.

"Come on," he murmured, easing her arms from around his neck. "Let's get you dressed."

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_So, I finally have some stuff to talk about at the end of this chapter. Feel free to skip this if you'd like – it's just my ramblings on where things are going. Anyway, first of all there's the diary. Meredith's been having a really hard time with the idea of reading about herself in it, and so she enlists Cristina's help. Not Derek's. Because he's worried about her and the diary, and she's been picking up on that, but also, and perhaps more importantly, because she's scared to share the real truth about dead mommy with him. The ugly truth. And now she's discovered that the events she is reading about are from when she was five, that she is quite possibly mere pages away from the end of the affair and the horror that came with it. And then Ellis calls her unlovable. Personally, I think Meredith has always had issues with viewing herself as someone worthy of being loved, and so this just plays perfectly into all her insecurities. It's so not what she needed to hear._

_Meredith has all of this whirling around in her head while she's trying to work, and it's making her very unfocused. She makes a lot of stupid mistakes in a row, which certainly doesn't help her feel any better about herself. (She dropped the kidney just four days ago at this point, so her surgical self-esteem wasn't exactly at an all time high anyway.) And so she's just stewing on the bridge when she runs into Derek and decides to fall back on one of her oldest tricks to improve her day. (Remember, "I kissed Derek. I was having a bad day." From the original elevator kiss. She's been solving her problems this way since forever.) However, Derek knows exactly what she's trying to do, and is none to happy about it because it's just shades of sex and mockery all over again to him. He tries to get her to stop and talk, but after a few tries he can sense that she's not about to cooperate. So, Derek decides to try a different route. Mer's always had an easier time with the physical aspect of their relationship, and so he attempts to coax the truth out of her that way. And it actually works. Really, really well. So much so that Meredith ends up thinking of the night in the water. _

_The night in the water… So, that is a night that will play a fairly large role in this story. It will be revisited again. In their thoughts and in a flashback as well. The idea for it came from Derek's heartbreaking, "She knows how to swim. She's a good swimmer" in season three. Because there is no way that I buy Derek believing that completely and utterly in Meredith's swimming abilities to the point that he couldn't even consider the possibility of her drowning on accident unless he's seen her swim with his own eyes. (Or she told him that she used to be a lifeguard or something. But that's nowhere near as fun.) So, he has seen her swim. Meredith bringing that night up reminds him of a lot of good, but also of her drowning, which is still an issue for him but not so much for her, which makes things a bit conflicting. And a lot happened in and around the water that night because it also holds huge significance for Meredith. Their different views on that night say a lot about their issues/feelings when it comes to their relationship, and I'm looking forward to exploring that a lot in this fic. ( Plus, water is pretty much my all time favorite metaphor for Meredith, so that just makes things even more fun for me!) I hope the references to that night weren't too confusing – things should hopefully make more sense as the story evolves. Anyway, that's about all I have to say about the story for now. Thanks for reading! _


	5. Chapter 4

_So, I'm sorry this update took so long to get here! I'd hoped to have this posted by yesterday at the latest, but it was still pretty far from coherent when I went to bed last night, so I'm just now able to put it up. Anyway, better late than never, right? Thank you so much for the lovely reviews on the last chapter. It's so very motivating to hear what people think about the story. I'm glad most people weren't confused by the "night in the water" references. They don't refer to Meredith's drowning, but rather a scene I've made up for this story where she and Derek were both in the water on his land together. That's about it for now, this next chapter takes place a few days after the last one._

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The room wasn't completely transformed; it lingered in a strange, inbetween state of existence. He had a desk in there now, and his laptop was plugged in and humming softly. Paperwork was divided into two disheveled heaps on either side of the computer. There was a mug of coffee within arm's reach. His favorite pens lay in a jumble, waiting for some sort of organization. He hadn't gotten around to framed pictures of his family or any other little knickknacks that would proclaim 'this is Derek's space,' but maybe that was because it was still largely Ellis's. The back half of the room was still littered with cardboard boxes packed to the brim with Meredith's past. They sat there waiting to be sorted through and relocated to another room in the house. Derek leaned back in his chair, swiveling around to stare at the boxes. They really were an eyesore; Ellis Grey breathing down the back of his neck. But he wasn't pushing Meredith. That was his new way of doing things, the not pushing. The boxes weren't hurting him, and Meredith still had Ellis breathing down her own neck too in more ways than he was sure he'd ever be able to imagine. The diary was more than enough for her. He'd just step around the boxes until she was ready to go through them some more. As sacrifices went, it was a very small one.

Derek turned his back on the boxes to rifle through a stack of papers, fishing out a letter he had received the day before. He reread it again, his initial excitement returning in little jolts like electric shocks with each word he read. This was excellent. Meredith… She would love this. At the very least, it would cheer her up. Meredith had come home from work holding her stomach and scowling at every little thing he said. She had slammed the door and stomped upstairs, muttering something about a bath and a slab of chocolate the size of one of the smaller continents, and he had left her to it, eager to avoid getting glowered at some more. But this, _this _would make her smile. He worked steadily for a good half hour, time flying by until he heard the low creak of the squeaky fourth step on the staircase. Derek smiled and set down his pen. Neither Alex nor Izzie was home, so he didn't even have to guess. He scooted his chair back from his desk a little, peering out into the hall.

"Meredith?" he called.

She stepped into view a moment later. Her skin had that warm rosy glow it always got after a bath, and the ends of her hair were damp and twisting into untidy waves. Even from the doorway, he could tell she smelt vaguely floral like his own private garden come down to him. The discomfort she had worn home from the hospital had apparently been washed away by the water, and in its place she had picked up this quiet air that made her seem even softer and more feminine than usual. Like the lavender that scented her hair. She was smiling at him, a gentle, languid smile, and she came to a halt, leaning into the doorway.

"Well, look at you," she said. Her smile grew, stretching from a soft, absentminded thing into something broad and teasing. "In your study, being all…studious." She gestured with her hand, taking in the whole room with a swish of her wrist.

Derek grinned and rocked back in his chair. "You know me."

"It's very cute," said Meredith. "What's up?" She took a questioning step backwards. "Should I let you keep being studious?" Derek shook his head as he leaned forward, his arm just able to close the distance and catch her wrist in his grasp.

"How are you feeling?" he asked quietly. "Any better?"

Meredith snorted. "Like Edward Scissorhands is trying to turn my uterus inside out."

He frowned, feeling uncertain and distinctly unhelpful. "Oh, maybe you should…"

She cut him off with an amused shake of her head. "Relax, Derek. I'm fine, it's just cramps. But," she smiled winningly at him, "no sex for you tonight."

"I know."

Meredith raised an eyebrow. "You do?"

Derek pushed back his chair, pulling her into the space between his legs. "Of course. I figured as much. I just want you to feel better."

"Oh, so you're doing the good boyfriend thing here, huh? That's what this is?"

"I always do the good boyfriend thing," he said indignantly.

Her grin just broadened. "Whatever you say."

Derek reached up and looped an arm around her waist, scooping her easily into his lap. "I do. I'm about to do it again right now." He leaned in so his voice was at her ear. "Watch."

He heard her breath catch, hitching in her throat. "Watch what?"

"This…" Derek tilted his head to the side to see around her and located the papers he had been going through. He pulled the letter from the messy stack on his desk and held it out to her. Meredith twisted around in his lap, confusion tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"What's this?" she asked.

"Read it."

He watched her as she let her focus return to the paper, her teeth biting down on the very tip of her tongue as she took the letter from him and quickly scanned it. Her frown faded like candle smoke, replaced by a smile that was born in her eyes and quickly spread out from there to turn her whole face radiant. She looked up, meeting his gaze over the page she held between them.

"Is this for real?" she asked.

"Yep." He smiled back; her eagerness was infectious.

Meredith shook her head. "Derek, this is great! This is…wow. You're really going to continue the clinical trial? I had no idea. You've got IRB approval and everything!"

"Yeah," said Derek. "I've been looking over our records from the trial, and I think I can refine the viral cocktail to create an even more successful treatment." He hesitated. The success that had come with the journal publication added its own share of confidence to the mix, and he knew a lot more than he had at the start, but he'd still be gambling with human lives again. He cleared his throat, aiming for a certainty he didn't quite feel. "It'll take some work, but I think I can do it."

"Of course you can," said Meredith. She beamed at him, and it warmed him from the inside; she was like standing in his own personal ray of sunlight. "The Shepherd Method lives on," she murmured, her voice low and her mouth close to his. She let her lips hover just above his, turning the space between them into something tantalizing and torturous. Time seemed to slow as Derek waited for her to kiss him, and when she finally did, it was soft and quick and delighted. "Wow," she said when she pulled away. Meredith set the letter down on his desk and wound her arms around him. "You're really going to do this?"

"No," said Derek. "We're really going to do this."

She sat up straight, her eyebrows rising. "What?"

"Us. Together, Mer. We're gonna do this."

"But how?" Meredith pushed a hand through her hair; she seemed to shove her smile away with the gesture. "We can't specialize anymore. Not second year residents. How will I have the time to recruit patients and track the progress of the trial and…" She shook her head. "It won't work, Derek. I have to log hours in every specialty."

"I'll give the busywork to one of my neuro residents," said Derek with a shrug. "It'll be fine. But you deserve to be in on the surgeries. This was your idea, remember?"

"And now it's yours," said Meredith.

"Ours. Now it's _ours_."

She smiled at him then as if he was handing her the moon on a string. She was the only one who ever looked at him like that; it was better than seeing his own face on the cover of every freaking medical journal in the states. But too soon her expression turned cautious once more, and she placed her hand tentatively against his chest. "Are you sure this will work? You know the Chief's new rule…I don't want him mad at me."

Derek grinned, tilting his head to the side as he stared up at her. "Don't worry. I can get around that. If you're interested…"

"Are you kidding? Of course I'm interested!" Meredith scooted closer and shifted so she straddled him. "Thank you," she said, bending down to crush her lips to his. He stopped thinking in favor of swallowing her whole, drinking down the happiness that for once seemed to spill out of her, overflowing like some fabled eternal spring. When Meredith finally pulled away she was grinning. "This is the part where I would go on and on about how my boyfriend is a surgical genius if it wouldn't do bad things for his ego."

Derek chuckled. "No, go on and on. It would do good things. Excellent things." Meredith just smiled and shook her head, fishing her phone out of her pocket. He watched as her thumbs began to move quickly across the keypad, filling the room with low, electronic beeps. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"Bragging."

"Bragging?"

"Mmm…" Meredith nodded her head, lips pursed and her eyes not straying from the small screen in front of her. "Yeah. To Cristina," she said.

"Let's see…" Derek looked down at the screen. "'Clinical trial on again.' You call that a text? You haven't said anything about how irresistible you find the neurosurgeon heading the trial to be."

"Oh, yeah. About that. I've been meaning to tell you, but…I'm kind of over him." Meredith leaned back, a slow grin stretching across her face as she hit send. "I've got a thing for an intern now. Steve? Maybe you've heard of him?" She scooted forward again until her hips were pressed flush against his and their mouths were just one breath away from kissing. "He makes me hot," she said in a hushed voice, dangling each word like a drug.

Even with her smile and the laughter in her eyes, her words shot a dull pang through his chest. Derek reached out, needing to touch her. He trailed his hands up her body to cup her face in the palm of his hand. "That's too bad," he murmured. "He was always very eager to help, but now I'm going to have to ban him from my OR for the duration of his residency." They stared at each other intensely, her eyes feeding straight into his until Meredith slipped up and giggled, leaning in to kiss him as she laughed. A low chuckle resonated from deep in Derek's throat, and he shook his head. She was something else.

Meredith's cell phone chimed loudly in her hand, and she pulled away to study the screen, her eyebrows drawing together into something that hinted at a frown. She rose up abruptly onto her knees, flattening Derek to the back of the chair as she leaned against him. Her body loomed close in front of him, the zipper to her sweater dangling less than an inch from his face, her breasts at eye level and her hips pressed firmly against his ribs. She was warm and soft and all around him; the smell of lavender curled down his throat. Slowly, Derek slid his hands up the backs of her legs, gripping her thighs through the thin, stretchy fabric of her sweatpants before letting them settle over her ass. He could hear her typing out another message on her phone, but when he looked up all he could see was the swell of her breasts and the downward tumble of her hair. Derek swallowed hard.

"Mer?"

"Hmmm? Hold on, this'll just take a sec," she said absently, shifting against him as she spoke.

"Meredith…" Her name came out more strained that time. "_What_ are you doing?"

"Texting Cristina. Sorry, it's top secret."

"No, to _me_. What are you doing to me?"

Meredith shifted back on her knees slightly, curving her body so she could meet his eyes. She frowned. "Nothing. What are you talking about?" Her phone chimed, and Meredith leaned into him again to read her message behind the back of his head.

Derek clenched his jaw as she accosted him with another warm wave of lavender. The zipper jiggled in front of his face, teasing him. He felt like a horny teenage boy, struggling to think of anything other than shoving her back onto his desk and yanking that freaking zipper all the way down. "Remember the whole no sex tonight thing we talked about?" he gritted out. "You're really not helping with that right now."

"_Oh._" Realization spilled into her voice. "Well, you could try taking your hands off my ass." Derek groaned, thunking his head against the chair. "I'm just saying…" Meredith sat back down, twisting around to give him a soft smile. "Sorry. Is this chaste enough for you, Dr. Shepherd?" She pocketed her phone.

"Perfect." He smirked and fit a finger beneath her chin. "Top secret texts, huh?"

"Not really. It's just…Cristina." Her smile faltered a little. "She's not always the…"

"What?" prodded Derek when she fell silent.

Meredith met his eyes for a fleeting moment before looking away to stare resolutely at the laptop's screensaver. "I don't know." She exhaled loudly, her words coming out in a rush. "She's not always the nicest about us."

"Oh." The silence that followed was a long one that seemed to move them worlds apart though he still held her in his arms. He could feel her stiffen and turn to stone, an uncomfortable statue cradled against his chest. "And you're afraid I'll get my feelings hurt?" he asked.

Meredith shrugged. "She's just being Cristina…" Her voice sounded very small.

Derek bit back a sigh and the urge to demand just how long Cristina was going to be there, the squeaky third wheel to their relationship. His fingers crawled slowly along Meredith's spine, finding each vertebrae, a distant part of his mind automatically cataloging them. T3, T4, T5…He shook his head. "She really doesn't like me, huh?"

"She doesn't hate you."

"But she'd love it if we weren't together." It wasn't even a question. He knew it was true from the looks Cristina Yang often threw in his direction. The best friend pronounced him not good enough.

Meredith finally looked at him again. For once, her eyes weren't distant. They were open and achingly uncertain. "I don't know," she said miserably. "She should want me to be happy. I think maybe it's just the history thing."

"The history thing?"

"Yeah. You and me. We've been on again and off again since we met, and then on again and off again some more, and, every time we were off, she was the one who got to deal with me being all emotionally…emotional." She wrinkled her nose. "I guess she just hasn't stopped holding a grudge or something."

Derek felt as if he'd been kicked in the gut. "So I'm always going to be the guy with the secret wife?"

"No," said Meredith slowly. She looked up, her eyes narrowing. "Not unless you have another one."

He reached out and traced the side of her face. He could never tell when she said things like that how much of it was her joking and how much of it was a piece of her faith in him that still had a broken, battered edge. "Of course not, Mer," he said.

She looked at him and nodded, an oddly intense grin flashing across her face. "Right. I know. I'm not stuck there. That's the past, and the past should…" She trailed off abruptly, her gaze shifting away from Derek to focus on some point beyond him. "The past should stay in the past."

"Okay," he agreed.

"It should just…stay there," said Meredith. Her voice was forceful, and she slipped out of his lap, standing up in the triangular space between his legs and the start of his desk. Her eyes were intense and once again hauntingly distant. Derek twisted around to follow her gaze only to find himself staring at the jumbled group of cardboard boxes still commandeering the back half of his study. "Sorry," continued Meredith, pushing her hair away from her face. "I said you could have this room, and I still haven't…" She slipped through a gap between his knee and the desk that had seemed impossibly small, but somehow she fit through it to stand like a target in the open room. She shook her head. "I should finish going through these."

"Mer, you don't have to do it right now…"

Meredith ignored him, stalking over to the boxes and sitting down unceremoniously. She dragged the nearest one a little closer and pulled the tape off the flap with a single, violent tug. The items she shifted through were meaningless to him, an old set of tumblers wrapped in faded tissue paper, dog-eared books with well worn spines, a weathered lampshade the color of wine. Meredith touched each item like it was a treasure and set it on the ground. He meant to go back to work and leave her to it, but Derek found he couldn't even turn around. He could only sit there watching as she worked her way slowly through all of the first box and then into another. She was near the bottom of the second, sitting surrounded by a heap of child-sized clothing, old medical journals and mismatched glassware when she pulled out a large, leather-bound photo album. She hefted it into her lap, swiping the dust from its cover with a flat sweep of her palm. He watched as she flipped it open, hesitation showing itself in every little movement of her fingers. But she smiled as she turned first one page and then another. It was a cautious smile, but it was there, standing out like a prize among the dusty, forgotten things that filled the room. She looked up and found his eyes.

"What is it?" he asked.

"Nothing…" Meredith shook her head and turned to the next page. She sounded shy, embarrassed. "It's just old pictures."

"Of you?" He could barely hold back sudden rush of excitement, managing to reduce it from a dizzying overflow to a slow but resolute creep, creep, creep of eager anticipation. He wanted to see her then, see the little girl she had once been before her parents had broke her like a porcelain doll knocked from its shelf.

"Yeah," said Meredith. "I don't know. It's dumb. I was hardly a cute kid."

"Now that I don't believe."

"It's just, I was really small and puny looking!" Another smile twitched across her face; it seemed more like some accidental tick than an actual emotional reaction, but then it twitched back across her face a second time, and that time…it stuck there. She hugged the album to her chest and stared up at him with something like hope in her eyes.

He stretched out a hand to her. "Let me see."

Meredith got to her feet with an exaggerated sigh. "Fine. There shouldn't be any pink-haired pictures in here, so it should be okay."

"Pink-haired? When did you have pink hair?" asked Derek. Her hair was golden in a way that reminded him of honey. He tilted his head to the side as he studied her, trying to imagine the waves that framed her face in a bright shade of bubblegum.

"High school," she said as she walked over to him and leaned against his desk. "I was a bit of a goth for awhile." Her smile spread as he raised his eyebrows. He could imagine her as a teenager, already busy meticulously laying brick on top of brick to form the wall around her heart. She would have been angry, he was certain of that. Angry and absolutely heartbreaking in her determination to not be vulnerable.

"Hmmm…what was that like?" he asked.

Meredith shrugged, her cheeks flushing slightly. "Well, black clothes, too much eyeliner and badly dyed bright pink hair for starters. I almost got a lip ring, but fortunately that never happened. I went to lots of parties in basements, raided my mom's liquor cabinet on a weekly basis and had fumbling, awful sex in the backseats of cars." She looked away abruptly, staring down at her feet for a long, silent moment before meeting his eyes again. "Why? Who were you in high school?" she asked flatly. Her voice was demanding, as if his words had been a challenge, as if she dared him to mock her for who she'd been.

Derek just smiled. His thumb grazed her wrist as he reached out and took the photo album from her, letting it rest unopened in his lap. "I was a band geek," he said. Lonely and awkward. That was his memory of high school. But Meredith, he would have found her fascinating even then, even when the whole world had seemed common and small and pointless. Her expression had softened, and she was regarding him with something reminiscent of a smile.

"I'm just glad you weren't prom king."

He chuckled, nodding his head. Derek flipped open the photo album and stared down at the first page, looking for the girl who came before the pink hair and anger strong enough to be hypnotic, looking for the girl who came before the woman he loved. A little girl stared back at him with the big green eyes he recognized and pale blonde braids he could have imagined, smiling a smile he knew he'd never seen before. He touched a fingertip to the corner of the page and he just _knew_. This was the girl who hadn't been broken; this was the Meredith that could have been. "This was you," he said softly.

"Yep. I think I was four, maybe five. We still lived here. Actually," she leaned forward, "that looks like the kitchen."

He turned the page and came face to face with another image of Meredith sitting on top of a man's shoulders. "Thatcher?" he asked.

"Yeah."

She perched on the arm of his chair, and they paged through her past together, finding picture after smiling picture of a younger, different Meredith. He wondered if this was what she would look like, that elusive someday maybe daughter who floated around in the back of his mind.

_That's the room where our kids could play._

She wasn't against the idea, at least in theory. But he wasn't about to bring it up, not now when he was certain there was a good chance she'd freeze up and panic, and he'd be forced to watch in real time as all the slow but definite progress of the past few months unraveled like one snag tearing apart an entire sweater. And so Derek held his tongue and imagined a girl with pigtailed blonde hair, tiny and delicate like Meredith, only she would never have to lose the radiant, trusting smile that had been stolen from Meredith. He would make sure of that.

They were near the end of the album when Meredith finally spoke again. "I hadn't seen most of these before," she said softly.

Derek hesitated, not really sure what to say back. "They're nice," he said at last. "I like them. You were a very smiley child."

Meredith scoffed, her eyes suddenly flashing. "Yeah, well, ignorance is bliss."

"Meredith…"

She shook her head and flipped through the last few pages in quick succession, barely stopping to take in the pictures. "They're from before Boston," she muttered. "All of them are before Boston. This must have been something Thatcher did. My mom never really took pictures after." She stood up, turning around to face him. Her arms were wrapped tightly around her chest, hugging herself close, and she seemed very far away. "Everything's before Boston," she said quietly, sadly. He knew the move was significant, but she placed a weight on the words that felt close to a death sentence.

Derek looked down at the album in his lap. "Do you remember moving there?" he asked.

"Yes." She wrapped her arms even tighter round herself, and she offered him nothing more than that.

"Do you remember living here before?"

Meredith shrugged. "Some of it, yeah. Not everything. It was a long time ago." She closed her eyes, and he thought that was all she would say, that she would fall into silence again, but she let out a little hum of sound and took a breath. Her voice was distant, and she spoke slowly, cautiously, as if she was unsure of all she said. "Some things I remember clearly. So clearly, Derek, like photographs inside my head." She opened her eyes and shrugged again. "The rest of it's just a big blur though."

"What things do you remember?" he asked.

"The bad things," she said flatly.

Derek sighed. "You could tell me about it, if you want to," he said. Her parents' divorce, the complete loss of her father from her life, they had to have been hard for her. They still resonated in her life in a thousand little ways. He wondered if he should tell her about his dad's death, if it would help her somehow. But Meredith just made a face and swooped in to press her lips to his in the softest, briefest of kisses.

"Thanks," she mumbled. "But I don't like to think about my family if I can help it."

"Why are you reading the diary then?" The question slipped out before he could stop it, and Derek gave her a hesitant smile, hoping that would make it feel less like an accusation. Meredith returned his smile with a frown and pulled the photo album from his lap. She flipped it shut and shrugged at him.

"I don't know. It's mostly surgical anyway. Like…ooh, she taught me how to palm a scalpel," she said. It was disconcerting, her absolute ability to steer the conversation away from things she didn't want to talk about. As if subject changing was an art form. She picked up a pen, flipping it against her palm with a finger before reversing the motion and, in a flash, grabbing a new pen to replace it. Meredith slapped the pen down and grinned at him. "See?"

"I see." Derek found himself smiling back despite himself. "That's very impressive, but Meredith…" Her grin faltered at the tone of his voice. He swallowed hard and took her hand. "I know it's not all surgical." He still remembered the mess she had been in the on-call room when she'd asked him if he loved her. When she'd had him tell her again and again. As if it was something that could ever be doubted. "Have you read any more since…" Your mother called you unlovable. Since then. Since the on-call room. "Since Tuesday?" he asked.

"Yeah, a little," said Meredith. "Slowly." She laughed and shook her head. "Whenever I can work up the courage. Cristina says it's worth it for the surgical tips."

"So Cristina's reading it?" he asked, trying not to mind that there she was again between the two of them. Close to Meredith in ways that should be his. He looked up at her; she almost seemed guilty. They stared at each other in silence until Meredith slipped her hand from his.

"She's read some of it. Not all of it," said Meredith stiffly, pushing away from his desk to return to the boxes. She chucked the album into one of the open ones and dropped to her knees, stuffing the items scattered over the floor back in with none of the ceremony or reverence that had brought them out. She said nothing, and the silence that filled the room as she worked was too thick. Oppressive. She didn't meet his eyes when she stood up again. "I'll try to get the rest of these done soon," she said quietly.

Derek shrugged. "No rush." He watched as she bent down, stacking the smaller of the two boxes she had gone through on top of the larger one and stooping awkwardly to try and lift both together. "Hey," he said, shaking himself to his senses. "Just take that small one. I'll get the big one." She tossed him a tiny smile as she straightened up, shifting the lighter box so that its weight rested against her hipbone. Derek walked over to her and hoisted the larger box up into his arms. "Where to?" he asked.

"Basement," said Meredith.

He followed her down the old, rickety staircase and into the chilled and dusty darkness of the basement. The floor was poured concrete, and it was rough and cold beneath his feet. Unlike him, Meredith had a free hand, and she reached up to turn on the light. It was a single bare bulb, and it filled the room with cheap light and harsh shadows. She shuffled to a far corner that looked almost like a child's fort. Boxes full of Ellis's things were stacked in lopsided towers. Most of it came from the initial two hours they had spent together moving boxes out of his study, but there were more boxes down there than he remembered carrying. He felt suddenly guilty; Meredith must have done more work for his study than he had realized. They added their boxes to the growing pile in the same, stuffy silence that had filled the study, not meeting each other's eyes, and so Derek was halfway to the stairs before he realized Meredith wasn't following. She still stood in front of the boxes, looking curiously frozen.

"Mer?"

She didn't answer him, but wrapped her arms around herself as she stared at the heaping wall of cardboard boxes. Derek was back beside her in four long strides, and he draped himself around her from behind, enfolding her in his arms.

"Mer?" he tried again.

"Yeah?" She whispered the word and leaned into him a little, the back of her head bumping gently against his chin. A shiver ran through her and he held her tighter. She almost seemed afraid.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yeah." She twisted around in his arms and smiled too brightly. "I'm fine. It's just…cold."

He tilted his head towards the open door. "Upstairs?"

"Yeah," said Meredith. She nodded her head a little too quickly, a little too vigorously, and then it hit him.

_Whenever I can work up the courage. _

She _was _afraid.

Derek put himself between her and the boxes brimming with her past, his hand on the small of her back as they made their way towards the thin rectangle of light falling through the open door.

He wished he could hide the diary away amongst the boxes.

He wished he knew why it scared her so.

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_Soooo, this chapter was a very hard one for me to write because it's in many ways a set up chapter to get things all lined up for what's about to happen next. (Plus it's just not quite as fun to write as angsty, I'm unlovable but you love me sex scenes.) And set up chapters always feel like filler to me and make me want to bash my head against a wall, but…I haven't figured out a better way to do things yet. So yeah, things were being set up here. Derek's starting the clinical trial up again. Meredith is inching her way through the diary, getting closer and closer to the day her parents' marriage ended and Richard left Ellis. Cristina's presence is manifesting itself in their relationship in ways that Derek can't stand and Meredith is starting to feel sort of…conflicted about. It can be really hard when your best friend doesn't like your boyfriend, and I think Cristina's lack of any real support when it comes to Derek is starting to get to Mer. And then there's the past. There's a lot of going through the past for the both of them with Meredith digging through boxes, talking about high school and childhood and secret wives, and dancing in circles around the diary. (I find it interesting that Derek always wants to know more about Meredith's childhood but is hardly Mr. Forthcoming about his own past.) He's also starting to feel more apprehensive about the diary. He knows it made Meredith feel unlovable and she keeps talking about Boston like it's the end of the world, but he doesn't know exactly what she's reading in there. He's picking up on her nerves though, and he's very aware that the last time Mer's dead mommy issues came to a head she went and drowned herself in the bay. So he'd love to just chuck the diary into a fire or something, but instead he's trying very hard to let her deal with her past on her own terms and just be there for her while she does. Anyway, that's about it for now. I'm going to try very hard to get the next chapter written and posted without such a huge delay! _


	6. Chapter 5

_So, this is a monstrous beast of an update. It's the longest chapter so far, and I feel like I've been editing the thing all week. I think this is as dark as the story gets. But I'm not sure because I can't objectively judge the parts that currently exist just inside my head. This one's pretty angsty though. It is my angsty little lovechild. Or something. I guess what I'm saying is stick with it through the angst, pretty please? There is a light at the end of the tunnel, and I promise it's not a train. Yay? Anyway, thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to review. I really appreciate it so much. It's wonderful and exciting and fabulous to hear what you guys think about the story, so many thanks for making the time and effort to share that with me. It makes me very, very happy! Anyway, yes…new update! Enjoy!_

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The sound of the page turning was far too loud; the harsh, dry crackle made her think of dead leaves. Meredith smoothed the paper flat as if that would undo the sound. She was leaning against the center island in the kitchen, elbows on either side of the diary and Ellis's words right in front of her face. She was getting closer to Boston. She knew she was getting closer. The past three entries had all been about fellowship options, and this one looked to be more of the same. There was an undercurrent of tension to the entries that had been missing before; it lurked there in subtle ways, hidden beneath the standard recounting of the days' surgeries. They were little things, certain words and phrases that only jumped out at her at all because by now she had read her way through countless surgical commentaries. There had been a rhythm to the retelling and now that rhythm was gone.

Meredith picked up the diary, holding it open as she walked to the fridge, moving with slow, shuffling steps as she continued reading about the many benefits of the fellowship program offered at Mass Gen. She yanked open the fridge and glanced up from the diary long enough to peer inside. She loved the lazy luxury of post-call days off, but it meant that she was hungry and Derek was still at the hospital. She couldn't hit him up for food. He always said he wasn't a gourmet chef or anything, just a guy who had grown up with four very girly sisters, and she found it odd that he was modest about this when he was so rarely modest about anything at all. She actually tended to find his arrogance hot, given that it was surgical or something else fairly neutral and not related to his superiority at the whole relationship thing, but there was something damn near adorable about watching him claim to not be much of a cook and then proceed to do things with multiple ingredients, things that involved sauces and seasonings and knowledge about strange things like oven settings. Sometimes he even made the occasional side dish. Granted, it was always healthy and usually involved things that were green and leafy, but it tasted good. With a heavy sigh, Meredith resigned herself to another grilled cheese sandwich, and she grabbed a loaf of bread, the butter and an opened package of cheese slices. She cradled the items awkwardly against her chest, her other arm still holding the diary, and kicked the fridge shut with her foot. The items were dumped in a heap on the center island, and Meredith propped the diary up against the salt and pepper shakers.

She kept reading as she buttered the bread, dragging the knife in slow, jerky motions. It took her much longer than normal, but the diary was distracting her to the point where she felt slow and forgetful, almost drugged. She had picked up the cheese and, five pages later, looked down to discover she was still holding the package in her hands. Meredith rolled her eyes at herself and pulled out two slices, slapping them down on top of the bread. She went straight back to the diary. She had meant to read it slowly, cautiously, taking in just a little bit of the past at a time. And she had for a good two weeks, swallowing a paragraph or two every day like it was some bitter pill she had to take. But lounging in bed on her day off was hard to do with the diary waiting right there in the drawer of her nightstand. She had given in and curled up with the diary in a den of pillows and blankets, whittling down the days until Boston. Or the days until the days _before_ Boston, if she was being honest with herself. It wasn't the city she feared, but rather everything that led to their moving there. That was why she'd been reading it in small doses. Inching her way towards Boston. Acclimating to the idea. Only now she'd gone ahead and ruined everything. Meredith had read for a solid hour in bed and, when she'd gotten up, she had brought the diary with her. She'd tried to watch TV while she folded her laundry, but that had been no use. Barely ten minutes into channel surfing and she had pinned the diary open with her knee while she rooted through the laundry basket to find matches for all her socks. And now she was starving, but she couldn't even concentrate on what she was doing long enough to make a freaking sandwich.

Meredith turned the page, and once again the sound seemed far too loud for the silent kitchen. She tried not to mind and just kept reading. Ellis had written out a long and incredibly detailed pros and cons list for each of the hospitals she had received fellowship offers from. It was just like her mother to receive multiple offers. Everyone wanted Ellis Grey, and the Grey Method didn't even exist yet. She wasn't _the _Ellis Grey yet. But, after the pros and cons lists for Ellis's fellowship choices came equally elaborate ones for Richard's. Meredith stopped short when she reached his lists and pinched the bridge of her nose. It was like the sudden illumination a light bulb brought to a dark room; the tension wasn't hidden anymore. It was right there in front of her in the form of pages and pages of pros and cons lists for her mother's married lover. She really was getting closer to Boston. Her stomach churned uneasily at the thought. Or was it just from hunger? It wasn't like she didn't know what happened next; she could handle this. Meredith pivoted on the balls of her feet, turning to snatch a frying pan from the cabinet. She set the grilled cheese up over a low flame and forced herself to keep reading.

There was more and more talk about fellowships, and Ellis's tone was swinging wildly from excited to anxious and back again. Richard's name cropped up far more often than she cared to read. Meredith looked up from the page to push her hair back from her face. She hadn't brought a hair tie with her and so the long, loose strands kept flopping down into her field of vision to irritate her. She chewed on her lip, trying to ignore the knots tightening in her stomach. The entry finished up with talk of that day's procedures as if everything was normal. As if the world wasn't starting to tilt in strange new directions. It was. The world had tilted when Addison showed up. She couldn't begin to imagine what strange angle she'd be rotating at if Addison had been there from the very beginning, a tangible presence even that first night in the bar.

Meredith turned the page. She found the next entry, read the first sentence and stopped. She just stopped.

_I'm leaving Thatch tomorrow, and Richard is going to leave Adele. _

She was there. She had finally found the day when everything began to change.

She hung there in silence, jumping when thunder rumbled in the distance. It was soon followed by the split, splat, splattering of raindrops hitting the windowpanes. Meredith reached out and closed the diary. She tried not to notice how much her hand trembled as she did. An overwhelming desire to see the storm washed over her, and she shuffled to the nearest window. It was dark and gray outside, the storm doing its part to hurry the approaching night, and the water on the glass made the light from the streetlamps shimmer and refract. The wind howled and a crack of lightening split the sky. Thunder rumbled close behind. She felt caught in the eye of a hurricane; the world was raging outside, but inside everything was too still, too calm. The silence was gnawing at her from the inside, and she wasn't sure she trusted the ground beneath her own feet. Meredith pressed a palm to the glass, needing to feel something solid. It was cold and smooth to the touch, and it made her hand feel clammy, but she didn't pull away. She stood there with her palm to the storm and the rain roaring inside her mind, trying to focus on the fat tracks the raindrops traced down the length of the glass. But all she could see was her mother's words, as if they had been scratched across her eyelids with a pin.

_I'm leaving Thatch tomorrow, and Richard is going to leave Adele. _

It was the beeping of the smoke alarm that finally jerked her from her thoughts and pulled her hand from the windowpane. The air had a foul, burnt smell, and she cursed as she hurried to turn off the burner. Smoke was filling the air above what had once been a grilled cheese sandwich, and Meredith cracked a window, letting in the rain. The smoke alarm kept scolding her, beeping again and again in an angry monotone. Her phone chose that moment to go off, adding its own insistent ringing to the mix. The screen proclaimed that _'Cristina Cell' _was calling, and Meredith flipped the phone open.

"Hello?" she said, whirling around to glare at the smoke alarm some more. It was still beeping like some sort of stupid, beeping…whatever. She hated it. Meredith stomped over to where it was mounted on the wall and swiped at it with her free hand. She couldn't reach.

"You are going to be so jealous when—" Cristina dove straight into conversation only to be interrupted by Meredith's exasperated sigh.

"Crap!" Meredith jumped and made another grab for the smoke alarm. She still fell short of reaching it. "Would you just shut up already?" she growled at the alarm.

"Why'd you answer the phone then?"

"What?" asked Meredith. "I don't mean you. Hold on." The beeping was growing more and more grating. She dragged a chair across the room, setting it right beneath the smoke alarm. The beeping was louder still when she stood on top of the chair, and she winced as she snatched the alarm from the nail that mounted it to the wall. It continued beeping even after she hopped down, so Meredith bashed it against the counter, knocking the batteries out and finally silencing it. She exhaled loudly and sank down into a chair at the kitchen table. "Finally," she muttered.

"Okay…what the hell was that?" asked Cristina.

"Oh, nothing," said Meredith with a shrug. "Just burning down the house."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, I was bored. Thought I'd dabble in arson for awhile," said Meredith. Cristina snorted, her laugh traveling over the line, and Meredith shook her head. "No, I was trying to cook and I, uh…" she glanced back at the diary still lying conspicuously on the center island, "I got distracted."

"And this is why we order in."

"I know, I know. What's up?"

"Piggyback heart transplant, that's what's up," Cristina crowed. Meredith smiled; she could hear Cristina's grin through her voice alone. "It was kick ass. Anyway, I was about to leave, but guess what just came in. Your crazy neuro loving self would be all over it."

"Umm…another surgery?

"No really, Nancy Drew. Emergency craniotomy for a GSW to the head. Bullet guy was minimally conscious when he got here too."

"Shut up!" Meredith leaned forward, tucking her legs up under her.

"Uh huh, and _I'm _scrubbing in. Your boy toy is good for something after all."

Meredith frowned, her excitement dampening. "Boy_friend, _Cristina. You make it sound like he's nothing but my own walking, talking vibrator." Her voice came out a little too tense, a little too close to angry, and neither of them said anything for a moment. She could hear the slow in out of Cristina's breathing over the phone, and she tugged on a loose lock of her hair, glaring at her split ends.

Finally, Cristina cleared her throat. "Don't we all want one of those?" she quipped. Meredith gave in and laughed, nodding her head as the tension dissipated.

"Derek's doing the surgery?" she asked.

"Yep."

Meredith groaned. "I always end up with the worst days off. I was at the hospital for thirty-six hours, and all I got was one lousy biopsy."

"Oh, you're one to complain. Like you don't have your own personal clinical trial starting up again."

"Okay, fine. There is that," she admitted. It was still a little hard to believe. Derek was starting the clinical trial up again, and she hadn't even needed to suggest it. He'd just gone ahead and done it himself. It made her want to say lots of glowing, giddy things about her boyfriend, but she held her tongue for Cristina's sake.

"When's your first patient?" asked Cristina.

"Umm…pretty soon, I think. I'm not really sure when though. Derek's got one of his neuro residents tracking all that stuff now." She shrugged and leaned back in her chair, wrapping an arm around her knees and pulling them to her chest.

"Wait, you don't even have to do any of the busy work this time?" Cristina's voice had a bit of an edge to it, and Meredith stiffened instinctively. Lately, they couldn't seem to manage a single conversation without getting into some sort of argument about Derek.

"It's not that I don't want to," she said cautiously. "But I can't just drop everything and run the trial for Derek. You know how the Chief is these days."

"So you just get to slide right into the OR, huh?"

"No," said Meredith. "It's not like that. I have to—"

"I thought you didn't like it when Derek gave you special treatment."

"It's not special treatment! I'll have work to do too."

"Oh, please," said Cristina, and Meredith could practically hear her rolling her eyes. "You want to pretend it's not special treatment? Fine, you do that, but we both know that's absolute crap. There's no way Shepherd would slide anyone else into an entire clinical trial's worth of surgeries. It's only happening because you're sleeping with him."

Meredith's jaw clenched; she felt as if she'd been smacked across the face. The sudden pain in her chest was a mishmash of shock and anger and sadness. "The trial was _my _idea," she hissed. She could hear her voice shake, and she took a deep breath, trying to keep the tangled ball of emotions caught in her chest from spilling over into her speech. "That's why he's doing it," she said fiercely. She bit down on her lip, waiting for Cristina to say something back, but the line was silent. Her hand was gripping the phone so tightly it hurt, and the seconds ticked on, growing heavier and heavier. Meredith knew if she hung up without saying something that this would devolve into a big fight. It wouldn't just be the sort of bickering that they seemed to be so good at lately. It would be something huge. The kind of fight they'd never had before. She glanced at the diary still waiting for her on the center island and sighed; fighting her past was enough for one night. "So, uh…a piggyback and a craniotomy all in one afternoon. Not a bad day," she said at last, using surgery as a peace offering.

"Not a bad day," agreed Cristina. Her voice was softer than usual, and Meredith suddenly felt much farther away from her than a simple phone call. She looked at the diary again, and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled and rose up.

"Um, do you know if Derek has another surgery scheduled after the craniotomy?" she asked.

"No idea. Why? You want me to tell McDreamy to hurry home to you?" asked Cristina, for once saying McDreamy without the requisite heavy helping of sarcasm. Meredith smiled; it was the closest she'd get to an apology.

"No, don't tell him to hurry. I have a lot to read…um, not read, _do_," stammered Meredith, cringing at her words. "I mean I've got a lot to do, and so…if he wanted to do another surgery, that'd be, um…that'd be okay by me."

Cristina snorted. "Reading? You're binging on the dead mommy diary, aren't you?"

"No," said Meredith flatly.

"Right."

She sighed and got to her feet. "Well, okay fine. Maybe a little," she admitted, heading back to the center island and the waiting journal. She held her breath, hoping Cristina wouldn't ask for a summary because Ellis was leaving Thatcher tomorrow and she wasn't sure she could talk about that with anyone.

"You're still hiding it from him?"

"I'm not hiding it from him," said Meredith. "He knows I'm reading it."

"But he doesn't know _what_ you're reading."

Meredith sighed. "It's complicated."

"You're hiding it," repeated Cristina, sounding as casual as if she was simply commenting on the weather.

Meredith stared at the journal. She kept it tucked away out of sight whenever Derek was around, as if it was something shameful or malicious. She never brought it up herself. It was always him who pressed the subject, wanting to know if she was reading it, if she was handling it okay. It was sweet and very concerned boyfriend of him, and her answers were always as vague as her conscious would let her make them. She exhaled loudly, sending her bangs fluttering.

"I'm hiding it," she admitted quietly. She bit her lip and laid her hand against the cover of the diary. "Do you think I should…_share _it with him or something?"

"Do what you want."

"But what do_ you_ think I should do?" pressed Meredith. "I mean, I think he's fine not knowing. He prefers normal me to dark and twisty me anyway, and there's a lot of dark and twisty stuff in the past. But, maybe this is a full disclosure sort of relationship. I did hate when he didn't fully disclose about the wife. Or the nurse kissing habit." She took a deep breath, "So, in the interest of full disclosure, we're saying I should parade all the skeletons out of my closet for him to inspect. Right?"

"I don't care. Share it. Hide it. Read him a chapter before bed every night. Whatever."

Meredith frowned. "What happened to being supportive?"

"I have been supportive," said Cristina, and Meredith was surprised to hear the heavy exhaustion in her voice. "But it's a freaking dead end, Meredith. You still don't trust him, and it's not like you should anyway, so…"

"I do trust him," said Meredith quietly.

"Please… You don't even trust him enough to tell him about your dead mommy crap. You think it'll be too much for him to handle and he'll leave again."

The kitchen turned blurry; her eyes were brimming with unspilt tears. "He's not going to leave me," said Meredith, her voice barely more than a hoarse whisper. She bit down hard on her lip, feeling as if she was trying to hold back a breached dam with nothing more than her own two hands and everything was slipping and spilling and rushing out through the cracks. Silence came between them once more, and Meredith stood unmoving, feeling dull and sick inside. Cristina wasn't saying anything, and every moment in which they said nothing seemed to push them farther and farther apart.

"I have to go scrub in now," said Cristina at last, and Meredith drew in a shaky breath, nodding her head.

"Yeah. I've got stuff to do too," she said quickly. She pulled the phone from her ear and hung up, not waiting for any sort of goodbye. Tears spilled from her eyes, and she wiped them away roughly. Things weren't supposed to be weird with Cristina. It made everything else that was bothering her suddenly feel close to unbearable. Even the rain seemed too loud. There was a very charred sandwich still waiting for her in the frying pan, but she no longer felt remotely hungry. She chucked it into the garbage and picked up the diary again. She didn't want to think about Derek and Cristina.

Meredith sank into a chair and flipped through the pages to find her place. She could do this. She could read about her mother's plan to leave her father. She could. She sucked in a deep, rattling breath, and the rain drummed loudly against the rooftop. Too loud. But she could do this. She knotted her hands together and started to read.

_I'm leaving Thatch tomorrow, and Richard is going to leave Adele. We spent an hour locked in an on-call room today figuring it out. Richard and I deserve our chance to be together without hiding, and I can't take another day of Thatch following me around like this insipid kicked puppy. He has to know the end is coming. If he had any self-respect he would've already walked away. We don't need him. It's my work that pays for Meredith's school and for Louisa. The money from his research is nothing but spare change. Meredith doesn't need him, and Richard will be there for her now. She'll be fine. _

Meredith laughed out loud; it was a thin, high sound, full of disbelief. She could still remember the day he disappeared, the day her father just didn't show up. He was supposed to get her from kindergarten, and she had been so excited that Daddy was coming for her instead of Louisa. She thought she remembered something about the promise of ice cream with him on the way home, but she wasn't sure. She definitely remembered playing on the playground as all the kids were picked up one by one. At first, it had seemed fun. It had been beautiful outside, no rain. The slide hadn't been even a little bit wet. But then all the other kids had gone home, and her teacher, Mrs… God, she couldn't remember her name. She'd had beautiful black hair though, like a long, dark sheet. She'd asked her if she was sure it was Daddy's day to get her. She'd been sure. But she had still been playing alone on the playground when the slide stopped seeming so fun and the sandbox toys were all locked up and the whole place was quiet and empty and suddenly way too big. She'd had to go inside to a chair that didn't let her feet touch the ground with a woman who sat behind a desk and talked on the phone a lot. The woman had given her a puzzle that was too easy for her, and she'd just sat there waiting for him to come. Even then she'd been sure he was coming, but he never did. When someone finally showed up to claim her, it had been Ellis, still in scrubs and telling Meredith to hurry up because she had to get back to the hospital.

She never did tell her where Thatcher had gone.

_Away, Meredith. He's gone and he's not coming back. That's all you need to know. _

Meredith shook her head, pressing a hand to her forehead. Her skin felt sweaty and unfamiliar, as if she wasn't sure of her own body anymore. Her throat was dry and so she shuffled over to the sink and filled a tumbler with tap water. It tasted metallic and lukewarm, but she gulped it down as she listened to thunder grumbling insistently over the endless pitter patter of raindrops on rooftops. She didn't want to think about that day, about the way she'd missed Thatcher back when she'd still thought of him as Daddy. The word felt foreign now. Daddy. Thatcher. The names belonged to two separate men, the one who was supposed to get her and the one who never came. He never came, and instead, she'd been alone on the playground and alone in the hospital. Alone on that stupid carousel and alone on the kitchen floor in a puddle of her mother's blood. She screwed her eyes shut and then forced them wide open again, staring with blank intensity at the falling rain. She wasn't going to think about that day anymore. Therapy had fixed it. Her mother hadn't really wanted to die; she had just wanted Richard to come back. Everything was fine. There was nothing to think about. There was nothing to revisit. She didn't want to remember the color red.

But still she read on, sinking back into her chair and pulling the diary closer. Her mother stopped writing about leaving Thatcher. Instead, she talked about the day's surgeries as if she wasn't planning to change her entire world with the coming morning. Meredith found it calming, even distracting to lose herself in a detailed account of all the steps required to perform a laparoscopic Nissen fundoplication. Maybe it had worked that way for Ellis too. Make five small abdominal incisions. One for the laparoscope. Four for retraction and manipulation of the abdomen. Don't think about how to tell your husband it's over. Retract the left lateral segment of the liver to expose the esophageal hiatus. Don't think about what will happen if Richard doesn't leave Adele. Place a clamp on the esophageal fat pad, and don't think about it. Just don't think. But eventually the laparoscope always has to come out and there are no more sutures left to do; all that's left is what comes next.

Meredith's hand trembled when she reached the end of the entry, and she couldn't bring herself to turn the page. Every breath she drew was loud and rattling as if her lungs were loose and shaking inside her. She didn't want to turn the page and read what came next. She didn't want to read how her mother's world had come apart. How her own world had come apart. She'd already lived it all. That should be enough. How had she gotten here? This morning she'd been happy; she'd kissed Derek in the lobby of the hospital while she was heading home from work and he was going in. Now even her skin felt strange. She wanted to burry the book in the back of her closet and let it fester there forgotten. She wanted to never read the words on the other side of the page she still hadn't turned, but her hand was reaching out as if it had a will of its own, fingers finding the corner of the page and flicking it over. A distant part of her mind was aware that this was the sort of thing she really could use Dr. Wyatt for, that there was a distinct possibility that what came next would be too much for her to handle, but then the page was turned and she didn't give a damn because the past was scrawled in front of her. Gone was her mother's concise, utilitarian handwriting, and in its place was a frantic, sprawling script that reeked of pain and anguish. The ink was blotted and smeared in places. The text was runny. There was no mention of surgery.

_He's staying with her._

That was how it started. Wasn't that always how it started? Meredith leaned forward and read until she couldn't anymore, each word searing itself into her memory like a brand applied directly to her brain.

_He's staying with her. He's actually going back to Adele. All the promises he made me in the on-call room sound so hollow now, but I can't get them out of my head. I can't make them stop, and I need them to stop. He says it's because he can't do that to Adele, he can't hurt her like that. Never mind that I did it to Thatch for him. I gave up everything for him. But never mind that at all because Richard can't hurt his precious Adele. It's a load of crap. He's been hurting her every day since we started this, and suddenly he cares? He's a coward. She'll never love him like I do. _

_Meredith wanted him to ride on the carousel with her at the park, but he would barely look at her. I know he's said he doesn't want kids, but this wasn't like him at all. He's always put up with her little games far better than me. I never thought he cared that she wasn't his, but maybe he does. He'll have an affair with a woman who has another man's child, but he won't be publicly associated with her? If Meredith was his, he'd have to leave Adele. He would have to be with me. I never should have had Thatcher's child. I never should have had a kid at all. Now I'm alone with a five year old while Richard plays house with his wife. _

_How am I supposed to live like this? I'm all alone. I wonder if Richard would even notice if I was gone. If I was dead. Would he want to come back to me if I died? I brought a scalpel home with me. A ten blade. It's in my purse, and I can't stop thinking about it. I want to be stronger than this, but it hurts to breathe. I don't want this life. _

Meredith shuddered and drew in a shaky gasp of air. Her cheeks were slick with tears, and her mind was buzzing like a gnat. She stared blankly at the kitchen floor; it had run red with blood that day. Red. Everywhere. She stared until she couldn't see anymore. Until her eyes filled afresh with tears and the floor turned red. Until she was five again.

_They sat on the kitchen floor together. A game. At first she thought they were going to play a game. But Daddy was the one who played games with her, and he was never coming back. Still, she smiled hopefully. Maybe it could be a game. _

"_What are we playing, Mommy?" she asked. "Why are we on the floor?" _

_Mommy didn't answer, so she scooted closer, still smiling. But then she saw the tears, angry streaks down Mommy's face, and the sharp, silver blade that made Mommy a doctor held shaking in her hand. And she was afraid_.

"_Listen to me, Meredith. This is important," said Mommy. "Remember when I showed you how to call 911 if anything bad ever happened?" _

_She remembered. There was a stool by the kitchen sink, and when she stood on it, she was tall enough to reach the phone. Mommy had made her stand on it and pick up the phone once. Mommy had showed her how to press the 9. Then the 1 and the 1 again. Tell them your name, Meredith. Tell them your address. Tell them it's an emergency. Can you say that word, Meredith? Emergency. Good girl. That's what you would tell them, okay? If anything bad ever happened. She remembered. _

_She remembered and she was afraid. _

_She looked at Mommy. "What bad thing?" she asked. "Why am I doing 911? Mommy? Why are you crying, Mommy?" _

_Mommy didn't answer. She was still crying like she had at the carousel when she'd said no questions. No questions, Meredith. And then Mommy had walked so fast she had to run to keep up. No questions, Meredith. She was afraid. _

"_No," said Mommy. It was the voice that meant she had to be good right away, not later. "You can't call 911 today. It's not allowed. Do you understand me?"_

_She nodded. She would get in trouble if she called. Only a bad thing hadn't happened. It was okay. She didn't want to be afraid, but it was too quiet in the kitchen. She could hear Mommy crying and the faucet dripping in the sink. The silver blade was still shaking in Mommy's hand. She didn't like to look at it. She wanted it to go away. But then Mommy breathed in sharply and stopped crying. _

"_You need to pay attention, Meredith, because I've failed, but you don't have to. I don't want you to fail. Don't be so damn dependent. Don't… Don't depend on anyone. Okay?"_

"_Okay," she said. The doctor blade came up between them. She was afraid. "What are you doing, Mommy?" she asked._

_Mommy smiled at her, but then the blade flashed silver and bright, and it was the only thing she could see. Mommy pressed it to her wrist and drew a thin red line. It blossomed in red like a flower and gushed onto the floor. She was afraid._

_Mommy's hand was shaking. The blade was silver under red now. She switched it to her bleeding hand and pressed the tip to her other wrist. She rocked forward and shook her head. "This is so common and cheap," said Mommy in a voice that didn't belong to her. It sounded too thin like a blanket with a hole in it. "It's pathetic, that's what it is. It's ordinary. You can do better than ordinary, Meredith. You can do better." Mommy drew another red line across her other wrist, and the blade fell from her fingers. It landed in the growing pool of red that was creeping closer. She wanted to scoot away from it, but she couldn't. She couldn't move. She was afraid. _

"_Mommy?" she asked. Mommy's hands lay on the floor, leaking red. Shaking. It was blood, she knew it was blood, but she knew band-aids wouldn't help this blood. Everything was red. _

"_Do better than me," said Mommy. "Be an extraordinary woman, Meredith." _

_She nodded very hard so Mommy would know she was being a good listener and everything would be okay. So the red on the floor would go away. But it didn't. It was still growing. It was growing and growing until she was sitting in it. Her dress was red. Mommy's hands were red. The red touched everything. Mommy was silent again, slumped against the table leg. This was the bad thing, and she couldn't call 911. _

_She was afraid._

"_Mommy?" she whispered. "Mommy, please?"_

_Mommy sat very still, but her eyes were open. She couldn't call 911. But this was the bad thing, and she had to call 911. _

_She bit her lip so she wouldn't cry. "It's okay. I promise I'll be good," she said, and she sat quietly as the red bloomed around them. She had to be good so Mommy would love her. So Mommy wouldn't go away like Daddy had. She didn't want to be alone. She looked at Mommy and she looked at the blood for a long time. She had to be good. But then Mommy's eyes closed, and she was afraid._

"_Mommy, are you awake?" she asked. Mommy didn't say anything, so she crawled to her through the puddle. The red, sticky puddle that made her tummy feel sick when she touched it. She shook Mommy's shoulder, but Mommy didn't wake up. "Mommy, wake up!" she shouted. She shook Mommy's shoulder harder. _

_Mommy didn't wake up. _

_This was the bad thing, and she was afraid. This was the bad thing, and she had to call 911. She tiptoed to the stool by the sink. When she touched the phone it made a red handprint like she'd done with paint at kindergarten. She looked back at Mommy still asleep on the floor. She was very quiet so Mommy wouldn't know she called the 911. Mommy wouldn't know she didn't listen. _

_Daddy had left._

_She pressed the 9. Then the 1 and the 1 again. _

_She couldn't let Mommy leave too._

Meredith moaned, low and keening like a wounded animal, and she shook her head violently as if that would make the memories fall away. It didn't. Everything was still there, plastered to the backs of her eyelids, waiting to flood her the second she closed them again. She didn't want to remember. She didn't want to sit there just a few short steps from where she'd watched her mother start to bleed out. She could almost see it there in front of her without closing her eyes, as if all the blood was superimposed over her current life. As if it would never go away. It was supposed to go away. Wasn't that the whole point of therapy? Her mother didn't really want to die, and so all the blood was suddenly okay. She'd just wanted Richard to come back to her, and that was supposed to give Meredith peace. But the words in the diary were anything but peaceful, and all Meredith could see was blood and the split skin of her mother's wrists. Her fault. This was where the ugly came from. She rolled her hands over, palms to the ceiling, and stared down at her own wrists. The skin was smooth, pale and unmarked. She could see the faint blue squiggles where her veins traced long tracks from her wrists towards her elbows. Her wrists were fine. Whole and healed. Untouched. Ellis's bleeding wrists returned, superimposing themselves over her own, and she gagged. Meredith closed her eyes and clenched her jaw, but it was no use. She pushed back from the table, and her chair fell backwards, hitting the floor with a heavy clatter.

It was usually tequila that brought her to her knees on the bathroom floor, but now it was the memory of the blood. Its smell. How it'd felt when she had crawled through it to reach Ellis. The way it had stuck beneath her fingernails. She was a surgeon; she wasn't supposed to be squeamish, but Meredith leaned forward, tasting bile. She heaved into the toilet bowl, vomiting the breakfast she'd bought on her way home from work. Her shoulders shook and the porcelain was cold against her skin. She kept heaving long after her stomach was empty, and, when she finally calmed down enough to gasp miserably for oxygen, the silence in her mind only let the words in the diary come pouring back.

_I never should have had a kid at all._

She stood up and flushed the toilet, reaching for the nearest toothbrush. She didn't bother checking if it was hers. If it wasn't, she'd buy Alex or Izzie or Derek a new fucking toothbrush. She didn't care. Her mouth tasted foul, and she squeezed a fat stripe of Crest onto the bristles. She didn't look at her reflection as she brushed her teeth. She stared at her feet and at the unbroken skin on her wrists, but she couldn't look at her face. She closed her eyes when she spit in the sink. Her mouth was minty fresh, but all she could smell was blood and vomit. She slammed the bathroom door so hard it shook just to hear the sound, but then she tiptoed back into the kitchen as if there was something there to disturb. Her stomach roiled again. She couldn't be in the room anymore. Meredith stalked straight to the center island and snatched up the diary. She left the dirty pan on the stove and the bread and cheese on the counter. She left her chair upside-down on the floor and walked out of the kitchen with no destination in mind. Meredith felt as if she had been scraped from herself, distant and disassociated, watching her trek through the house from somewhere high above her own body. Reality was faint and faraway; she was an old movie on faded black and white film. She saw herself walk down the stairs and into the basement, but it didn't really register. The world was a dream, and she was floating.

She sat down with her back against Ellis's boxes and opened the diary in her lap. The words were what jerked her back. She slammed into herself and her stomach churned, but she didn't gag. Every breath she took was shallow and caught in her throat. This was her mother's goodbye. This was how the blame was divvied up. Ellis, Richard, Thatcher, Meredith. Her fault. She read it again. Then a third time. And a fourth. A fifth, a sixth, a seventh. She stopped counting after that. She simply read and reread and reread until she heard each sentence in her head before she saw it with her eyes. She read until the shape of every letter was familiar.

She read until she heard the front door slam.

Meredith looked towards the basement door and tried to breathe at a slower pace. Like a normal person.

She hoped it was Alex. He wouldn't come looking and, even if he somehow found her, there would be no judgment there. His past was every bit as fucked up as her own. Even though they'd never traded war stories, she knew. It was almost like she could smell it on him, an animal sniffing out one of its own.

She would settle for Izzie. She wished she'd picked the kitchen up though because there was very little chance Izzie would ignore the upturned chair. But there was a chance she would simply right it and carry on towards her room. And, if Izzie was feeling bored enough or mama bearish enough to come looking for her, Meredith wasn't above telling her to just leave her the hell alone. Izzie would be hurt, and she would have to apologize later. But… It would work. She would still be okay.

She couldn't promise herself the same if it was Derek. He would come looking for her; for him to do otherwise wasn't even a shadow of a possibility. And he _would_ find her. He would put all the pieces together; the diary, the basement, her silence, and he would pronounce her damaged goods. Not out loud. Out loud, he would want her to share. He would ask her questions and say her name like it had a hidden meaning only he knew. He would be perfect and concerned and everything else she never knew how to accept. And she would close the diary and try to come up with an excuse that didn't feel completely like a lie. His eyes would fill with disappointment, and she would have to run from that. Cristina would be right. She still wouldn't measure up, and slowly he would start to leave her again.

Her name rang out through the house and footsteps echoed overhead. It was Derek.

His voice grew louder at first and then turned muted and distant. When her name got louder for the second time, she was still trying desperately to feel normal. When she was alone, normal could include things like trembling hands and a great, gaping hole where her heart was supposed to be. Not so much when Derek was around. She shuddered and closed her eyes. She couldn't bring herself to move.

The basement door swung open with a slow creak. Derek. She kept her eyes closed to keep from seeing the concern in his. If only she wasn't still sitting on the floor. "Meredith," he said quietly, and she heard all the concern she'd closed her eyes to in the timbre of his voice. "What's going on? What are you doing down here? Are you okay?" His footsteps filled the room with a soft, slapping sound, and she felt the warmth from his body as he drew nearer. His hand came to rest against her knee. It was a familiar weight and she wanted to be comforted by it, but she felt strange and out of focus like an object blurred by water. "What happened?" he asked. He sounded so unsure. She felt bad for her closed eyes, but his voice was already causing them to sting with tears. She didn't know how to look at him right then. "Mer, you've gotta give me something here," he whispered. She thought she heard fear in the way he said her name. "_Please…_" He begged and finally she complied. Meredith opened her eyes.

Derek was crouched in front of her, with deep, worried lines etched across his face. His eyes were near black with concern, and she could barely meet his gaze. The tears in her eyes were a godsend; they blurred the world.

"What's wrong?" asked Derek.

"I'm…" Fine. The word died on her lips. Screwed up, fucked up, dark and twisty Meredith. Wasn't that the truth? She couldn't say that either though. She wanted to feel brave like she had that night in the house of candles. Why was the good always fleeting? Derek was waiting for her, and she couldn't say anything at all.

He sighed and his gaze dropped from her face to the open diary in her lap. "Did you read something?"

She nodded. She'd read something, alright. Something. Everything. Nothing at all. Too much to explain. Not that he really wanted to know. He thought he did, but that was just because he didn't _actually _know. She was doing him a favor, putting him out of his misery. Or, keeping him out of hers, really. Meredith shuddered as the blood on the kitchen floor swam again behind her eyes. Her fault.

"What did you read?" he pressed.

Meredith stared at him blankly. Was it still a suicide note if somewhere deep down the author didn't want to die?

Derek leaned closer, reaching for her. He was making a valiant attempt of not looking at the open diary without her permission, and that made her think of smiling in a vague and distant way like it was something she'd done once upon a time in another life. He plucked her hand from where it lay limply in her lap and threaded their fingers together. Their wrists weren't bleeding. She shuddered again, and Derek squeezed her hand.

"Meredith, please. I know something's wrong. Tell me what it is. Let me help you."

She could only give him silence. Her lips were a locked door, and she wasn't sure she'd ever had the key.

_You don't even trust him enough to tell him about your dead mommy crap._

Something prickled inside of her. It felt angry and challenging. She pulled her hand from his.

_You think it'll be too much for him to handle and he'll leave again._

Meredith finally met his eyes, and there was no warmth in her gaze. "You really want to know what's wrong?" She spat the question at him; anger had a voice where fear didn't. It sounded vitriolic, and Derek's eyebrows jerked up in shock, but he nodded.

"Absolutely," he said.

She sucked in a breath and rifled back to the previous page, finding the start of the entry. "Fine," she said flatly. "Read it."

Derek's face was a question mark. "What?"

"Read it," hissed Meredith. She scrambled up onto her knees. "May 11th. Start right there." She shoved the diary into his hands and got to her feet.

"Meredith…" He looked from her to the diary and then back again. "Are you sure you want me to—"

Meredith shook her head and cut him off. "You really want to know what you've signed up for here, Derek? Read it."

She pivoted on her heel and marched straight for the door before she could change her mind, leaving Derek stunned and alone on the basement floor, Ellis Grey's diary lying open in his hands.

-----

_Sooo…hi there. When I came up with the idea for this chapter, I had no idea how strange it would feel to write a chapter in which the main character is primarily interacting with a diary. But it was definitely strange. Because diaries don't talk back like normal people do. Or walk around. Or do anything other than lay there, really. However, I wanted to write about Mer reliving what happened at the end of her parents' marriage, and so…enter, diary! Mer had been really good about just reading small little excerpts of the diary, trying to warm herself up to the idea of what she thought she'd find at the end of the affair and the marriage, but you can only sit in the room with Pandora's box for so long before you give in and have to fling the lid open. And that's pretty much what happened here. It was tricky trying to figure out what to write for that entry because, while it's been established in cannon that Ellis didn't really want to die, I don't think she was like, hmmm…not feeling the death thing so much here, but maybe if I just give myself a nice little horizontal slit in each wrist I won't actually die, but Richard will come back. In my opinion, I think the not wanting to die thing was on a much more subconscious level, and that she was giving up on her life just as much as Mer in that moment, if not significantly more than Mer. And Meredith did have some closure on the whole thing thanks to therapy, but I don't think she was anywhere near done with therapy when she quit, and reading her mother's actual thoughts from that day was a much more intense experience for her than she was expecting. And it makes her a bit dark and twisty again, which is exactly what she doesn't want to be because I think she has this idea that Derek doesn't like her as much when she's that way. Really I think it's more that she pushes him away when she's like that, but he does get disappointed/fed up when she pushes him away, so there is something negative there for her to pick up on. And, even though she and Cristina are fighting, Cris pretty much hit the nail right on the head. She doesn't want to share the diary stuff with Derek because what if he realizes she's just way too messed up for him to be with, what if it makes him leave again. So she's been hiding it, and she still doesn't want to talk about it with him. When she gives him the diary, it's as much a test as it is her opening up to him. And it's easier to share this way. She doesn't like to talk when bad things happen to her, and she doesn't have a clue how to talk to Derek about what happened when she was five. She's scared to talk about it with him, but she can get angry and shove the diary at him because then she doesn't have to stick around and share. She gets to run and she gets to find out if he really will leave when he learns about her past. It's win-win. Or something. So yeah, that was this very cheerful chapter. Thank you so much for reading. I really hope you liked it! _


	7. Chapter 6

_Well, it's been a busy few weeks at school, but finals are finally over, and I'm free to write more. So, yay. And, to start off my winter break, here's the next chapter. I know there wasn't a lot of Mer/Der interaction in the last chapter, but hopefully this one will make up for that! Anyway, thank you so much to everyone who's taken the time to comment on this story. I really enjoy getting to hear what you guys think about my fic, and I appreciate it so much. So, thank you! And now, the next chapter!_

_-----_

Silence followed the sound of the door as it slammed shut. Derek was alone with nothing but concrete and cardboard for comfort, holding Meredith's past open in his hands. He wanted to find her. Her eyes had been wild when she fled, and while it made his stomach clench to even admit it to himself, he didn't quite trust her alone just then. But her past beckoned; he held its secrets in the palm of his hand. She'd placed them there. Read it, she'd said. He didn't have much of a choice. He wanted to know. He _needed _to know what he was dealing with. Derek glanced down at the open book and then back at the closed door. He was a fast reader. It wouldn't take him long to get to Meredith.

The words washed over him like cold water, and he found himself at the end of the affair. He felt like he was stabbing in the dark; was this what had upset her? Whenever she mentioned Ellis and Richard to him in the same sentence, it was with a tone of such heavy cynicism that he had felt certain she knew. Back when Ellis had been a patient, there had even been a ghost of a rumor going around about that curious friendship between Dr. Grey and the Chief. He'd spotted a few of the more senior nurses sporting knowing smiles. But, if that was all Meredith had to go on, maybe she had been in the dark. Maybe she'd just now found out and was horrified at the prospect of facing Richard in the morning. His hand clenched into a fist as he read. He should have prepared her for this. He should have forced the awkward conversation and saved her the discovery.

But soon his frustration with himself was quelled by a strong surge of anger towards Ellis. Never should have had a kid? How dare she? He could easily imagine what her words were doing to Meredith, and it wasn't pretty. He stared at the diary. The house was too quiet; he had to read faster.

In the end, Derek was left alone with silent disbelief. His stomach felt knotted and his heart was a jackhammer in his chest. A suicide note. The end read like a suicide note. He leapt to his feet, the diary falling from his lap to lay abandoned on the floor. He had to find Meredith. The tiny, pigtailed girl from the photo album came swimming back into his mind, and his sense of outrage was thick enough to choke on. She had been whole, once upon a time, in a part of her life he was sure felt as distant and ridiculous to her as a fairytale. Derek glared at the dark recesses of the basement; there was nothing left to yell at but ghosts and cobwebs. He stepped over the diary and headed for the stairs.

Everything was deathly still on the first floor, at odds with the heavy, frantic crash of his footsteps. He checked the TV room first, but the couch was empty and the remote sat in its usual spot. The kitchen was empty too. He knew she wouldn't be in his study, but he looked there anyway. Just in case. He took the stairs two at a time and barreled down the hall towards their bedroom, coming to an abrupt halt when he heard water running in the shared bath.

Derek knocked on the door. "Meredith?" he called. There was no answer. "Meredith?" he repeated, louder this time, hoping that if it was Alex or Izzie in there, they'd be able to hear him over the running water. Still, silence was his only answer. Derek tried the doorknob, half expecting to be locked out. But it turned in his hand, and the door swung open on its hinges. "Mer…" He stepped into the room, dizzy with relief. He'd found her.

Her clothes lay in a heap on the bathroom floor, and the shower was on. He could see her through the sliding glass, just standing there underneath the spray, clutching a bottle of shampoo in her hands. "Meredith," he tried again. She didn't even turn her head. Derek sighed and closed the door behind him, taking another step into the room. He watched her as seconds turned to minutes and she didn't move once. Her gaze stayed trained on the bottle in her hands, staring at it like it was some sort of holy relic. "Come on," he said at last, shuffling closer still. Her stillness was haunting. He knew she was lost somewhere inside her mind, reliving every word Ellis had written over and over again. "Mer, please," he said at last, placing a hand against the wall of glass. "What can I do? What do you need?"

Nothing. She gave him nothing.

Derek exhaled loudly, doing his best to force away his frustration. Still, she stared at the shampoo. "At least let me know you're okay for now," he said.

She finally looked up at that, but not towards him. Meredith tilted her head back, turning her face into the stream from the shower as if she was communing with the water. It rushed around her, dripping down her back, her legs, her arms. Derek could only stare, his stomach clenching nervously. He wished he understood where she went when she got like this.

"Mer…"

"I'm taking a shower," she mumbled, still not looking at him. There was a heaviness to her voice, an exhaustion so deep he felt it in his bones, and he could barely hear her above the roar of the water.

"Okay," he agreed. "Do you want me to stay with you?" He tried not to mind when she shook her head. She'd let him read the diary, and that was a step. A big step. Derek eyed her warily, shifting back and forth on the balls of his feet. It didn't look like any shower he'd ever taken, but what did he know. Maybe she needed this. "I'll be in our room," he said at last. "If you need anything at all, just yell." She didn't answer him, but he didn't expect her to. Some things never change. He walked back towards the door and tried not to mind.

A heavy thud stopped him in his tracks, and Derek whirled around, his heart immediately leaping into his throat. He half expected she had fallen somehow, but Meredith still stood there, now empty-handed. He couldn't tell if the shampoo bottle had slipped from her grasp or if she'd simply let it fall. One way or the other, she wasn't holding it anymore. He watched as she leaned forward, bracing herself against the slick shower wall. She started to shake, and he crossed back to her before his mind had time to process where his legs were taking him.

"Hey, it's okay," said Derek, though he doubted it himself. While it was her shoulders that shook most noticeably, her whole body trembled like a leaf caught in a hurricane. She looked like she was crying, but if she was, the sound was lost beneath the water. He slid the shower door open a crack with no real plan in mind, but she was falling apart and he couldn't just stand there doing nothing. He touched her shoulder gently, jerking his hand back in shock when the water splattered against his skin. It was ice cold and biting. She stood under it like it was nothing. "Meredith, the water's freezing!" he said.

She nodded but didn't look up. She was still bracing herself against the wall, her head bowed forward as the water rained down cold as ice against her skin.

"Come on," he coaxed, his voice growing urgent. "You've got to get out of there and warm up." She ignored him again. Derek sighed and pushed at his sleeve. "At least turn on the hot water." When she made no move to do so, he reached into the shower. Water speckled his skin as he grabbed the faucet, and his fingers stung from the cold. The water was barely any warmer when she shoved his hand away, shutting the hot water off and leaving her shower freezing cold again.

"Don't," she said, finally turning to look at him. Her eyes were red rimmed from the tears he now knew she'd shed, and her hair hung plastered to the sides of her face.

Derek sighed heavily. "What are you doing?" he asked.

Meredith shook her head. The water beat down around her, cold and relentless. "If I'd read it a year ago, I'd be doing tequila shots." Her voice was rough, as if she'd taken sandpaper to her vocal chords, and when she laughed, he felt uneasy. "Scratch that, I'd probably be drinking straight out of the bottle at this point. And then I'd take home some total stranger and fuck him, and if you knew, you'd call me a whore again." Her eyes were hard and challenging, twisting his heart into something painful. He opened his mouth to contradict her, to apologize, to say something, anything to get rid of the bitter, tortured misery that seemed to cling to her like a second skin, but she barreled on. "And maybe I would be, but at least for a little while, everything would just stop. It'd go numb. I wouldn't have to feel so…" She shook her head, letting the sentence hang there incomplete and unfulfilled. Derek waited. The strange blend of curiosity and uncertainty she awoke in him was rendering him immobile. Meredith turned to stare at the wall, tracing the shapes of the tiles with her fingertips. "I'm trying to be a better person for you, but that doesn't mean I don't still need to feel numb," she said at last, her teeth chattering. She shivered and leaned into the spray. "I need to not feel anything right now, and this is the best I can come up with without involving large amounts of alcohol. So please just leave me alone."

"No," said Derek, shaking his head. "I won't." It was painful just to listen to her when she was so distraught; her misery was his. "You'll make yourself sick in there. Please get out." Meredith was still trembling and her lips had a bluish cast to them. She made no move to get out of the shower, but simply stood there, not looking at him as the cold washed over her again and again. "Come on," he coaxed. "You're going to freeze to death in that water." The words slipped out without much thought, but as soon as they hit the air, Derek felt sick. She'd been blue that day. Not just her lips. Her skin had been blue. It was covered in goose bumps now, and she shuddered violently, a fierce shiver running through her. He could imagine her shaking like that in the bay, and he slammed his hand against the sliding door of the shower. "Enough," he said as the glass rattled. Meredith flinched, but she didn't look at him. He slid the door open anyway. "You are not doing this to yourself." Derek reached into the shower again and shut the water off. This time Meredith didn't do anything about it. He slipped an arm around her waist, fingers sliding over her slick skin, and coaxed her closer to him. "Get out of the shower, Meredith."

She shifted ever so slightly towards him, but made no move to climb out of the tub. Derek tightened his grip on her waist and leaned forward, his other arm reaching down to grasp the backs of her thighs as he hoisted her out of the shower. He held her there cradled against his chest, weightless and waterlogged, cold and small and dripping wet. This time her arms twined themselves around his neck, but her body seemed every bit as cold and limp as it had been the last time he pulled her out of the water. Derek kissed the top of her head, trying to fight off the memories of that day. This wasn't Elliot Bay, it was their bathroom. And she was breathing this time, not dying. If he could just remember that, he could hold it together enough to help her.

He set her down on her feet, but kept his hands on her, half expecting her to crumple to the floor if he let go. Meredith stared past him, not seeming to see him at all. The front of his shirt was soaking wet, but it barely registered. Derek twisted around and yanked a towel from the rack, wrapping it tightly around her. Meredith stood there silent and wet, still trembling despite the towel.

"Hey," he murmured, rubbing her arms to warm them. "I know it's a lot to take in, but you're gonna be okay." She finally looked at him at that, her eyes red rimmed and wild. He couldn't read her. She gave nothing back, no contradiction, but certainly no confirmation either. Despite how confidently he'd said it, he wasn't so sure himself; glass can only shatter so many times before nothing's left but smithereens. He kept rubbing her arms, unsure of what else to do. She'd never done this before, simultaneously shared so much of herself and shut herself off so resolutely. He didn't have a clue where to begin, and silence hung between them as they stared at each other.

For once, her eyes weren't filled with that glassy vacancy that meant she was trying as hard as she could to be somewhere else entirely. She was there in the moment with him. Naked and cold and hurting. He'd never seen her more exposed. The light in her eyes was painful to look at, and Derek wanted to take her far away from every painful memory, every hateful word her mother had ever said or wrote or thought, every stupid thing he'd ever done to hurt her. He wanted to take her far, far away. But Meredith hated rescuing, and he was sure that there was no place in the entire world that was far enough away from here.

And so they stared.

Her head tilted up and his came down, and their foreheads touched. He expected her to kiss him then, while he stroked her freezing skin and tried to calm his never quite dormant fears with the feel of her pulse beating strong as ever beneath his hands. She only rarely let him comfort her with anything other than sex, and that wasn't really comfort at all. It was just another way to get the thoughts out of her head for awhile. A way to be numb. She would be with him but so far, far away at the same time. But Meredith didn't kiss him. She only stared, shivering with every breath.

"You read it?" Her voice was soft enough to be a whisper.

"Yeah," said Derek.

Meredith nodded again and again until the motion began to seem meaningless. She splayed her hand against the soaking fabric of his shirt and broke from his gaze to stare at his chest. "You're still here," she said. That was near inaudible, but the words were spoken against his skin, caught close. He heard, and his heart broke at the disbelief held prisoner in her voice.

"Of course I'm here," he said. Meredith's shoulders started to shake again, and she didn't seek out his eyes this time. Her skin was still cold and clammy as the day she'd drowned, and he pulled her towel tighter, trying to stave off her shivers. It wasn't until he heard her sniffle that he realized all the shaking came from tears. "Oh, Mer," he said, wrapping his arms tightly around her. She stiffened, and he waited for her to pull away. But a single sob tore itself from her throat, jagged and devastating, and she slumped forward, burying her face against his chest. Her hands snaked up to wrap around his neck, and Derek held her close, rocking her gently back and forth in his arms. "It's okay," he murmured, his lips brushing against the sopping, matted mess her hair had become. "It's okay. Just breathe. Shhhh…."

Derek closed his eyes and held her closer, hating himself for the flicker of happiness that burned like a flame somewhere deep inside his chest. He shouldn't be enjoying this. Meredith was hurting, and that alone should strip away all joy. But he couldn't help it; she was letting him hold her. Her clothes weren't the only layer she'd peeled off, and still she let him hold her. She let him hold her while she fell apart, and he loved it. Time ceased to have any sort of meaning. He couldn't tell how long they stood like that, pressed so close together, her naked body against his clothed one as he held her up. She was all that mattered. He loved it. He loved her.

But finally Meredith stopped trembling and simply stood there leaning against him. She sniffled a few times, soft and quiet in her sorrow, and started to pull herself together again. Time regained its meaning.

"Meredith," said Derek cautiously. She nodded her head, pulling back a little to look up at him from beneath her eyelashes. The green of her eyes stood out against the black, and he found her beautiful even then, as tearstained as she was. He sighed and stroked her freezing skin. "You know she had no right to say that about you. None at all."

Meredith tensed up and shrugged, jerking her shoulders up and down. "It was her diary," she said, her voice low with resignation. "She was free to write what she wanted in there. Besides, it was a sentiment she expressed fairly often so…no surprises there."

"She was wrong then," said Derek fiercely. "She didn't deserve you. Ellis and Thatcher…they didn't deserve you at all." He felt Meredith shrug again, trapped as she was against his body, and he knew he had little chance of changing the opinions she'd spent her entire life cementing into rock solid facts. She was unwanted. A problem. Not worth the trouble. Anger boiled just beneath the surface, and he took a deep breath, pushing it away. Yelling wouldn't help her. His fingers wandered down the gentle slope of her neck, following it to her bare shoulder. A few tiny freckles speckled the pale skin there. "She was wrong, and…she was upset," said Derek at last. "She was distraught when she wrote that. She and Richard…" He trailed off uncomfortably, wanting to let her set the pace when it came to discussing her mother's affair.

"Yeah," she said quietly, giving a tiny nod. "They had an affair." Derek nodded in response, and Meredith's eyes narrowed. She shot him a skeptical look. "This wasn't news to you?"

Derek shifted his weight from one foot to the other, shocked at her perception. "Um…Richard mentioned it to me."

"Oh, Richard mentioned it to you?" she echoed faintly. "My boss talks to my boyfriend about the affair he had with my mother. Great. That's just great. What did he say? What did you…" She shook her head. "Why?"

"I think he thought I'd be able to relate," said Derek.

"Right!" Meredith's laugh was uncharacteristically thin and shrill. "Of course. You were both unhappily married with dirty mistresses named Grey." She pressed a hand to her mouth and shook her head. "Oh god, that's disgusting."

Derek frowned. This was definitely not how he had imagined the conversation turning out. "Meredith, you are not your mother," he said. "I'm not the Chief, and you were never my dirty mistress." She tilted her head to the side, looking at him disbelievingly. "You were my girlfriend, just like you are now."

Meredith snorted. "Revisionist history," she said. "I _thought_ I was your girlfriend, but I _was_ your mistress. And, since you seem to be forgetting, there was also prom. I was fully aware of just how married you were that night." Derek studied her face closely, trying to interpret her tone. It wasn't exactly angry, but there was a level of tension there that he hadn't expected. He hesitated, not exactly sure how to proceed. He couldn't tell if she was just creating a new sort of diversionary tactic to keep from thinking about the diary, or if this was something that really still bothered her. Derek sighed heavily.

"I don't like the word," he admitted. "You've always been more to me than that."

She gave him a tiny smile but then ducked her head, shifting away from him. "Right."

He fought back a second sigh; this would be an argument if he pushed it. "Did you just find out?" he asked. "I mean, about the affair."

"No," she said flatly, and relief filled him at her admission. "I put it all together awhile ago." She looked up again and gave him a wry smile. "Alzheimer's patients live in the past."

He nodded. "I always assumed you knew. The way you talk about them… It just seemed like you knew."

"Well, I never thought you did."

"Sorry," said Derek, desperately wanting to avoid doing anything to push her away when she was miraculously opening up to him. "It never felt like my place to bring it up. I thought I should wait for you to mention it…" He trailed off, trying to gage her reaction. Meredith stared at him unblinkingly, and he couldn't read her. But finally, she nodded.

"Okay," she said quietly.

"Okay? You're not upset?"

She shrugged. "I'm not upset." She wiped one hand across her face, clutching at her towel with the other. "Well, I'm upset, but not with you."

"Mer…you know, just because she wrote what she did," he began cautiously. "It doesn't mean anything other than she was in a bad frame of mind right then, but you don't need to think… For all you know, she probably brought the scalpel back to work the next day."

Meredith's smile failed to reach her eyes. "She didn't do that."

"What?" Uneasiness settled over him like a fog. "What do you mean?" Meredith shook her head and turned away. He watched the water drip from her hair. It streamed in thin rivulets down her bare back before disappearing beneath the towel wrapped like an afterthought around her hips. "What are you trying to say?" he pressed.

"She didn't take the scalpel back the next day."

"I don't… You really think she tried to kill herself?" His speech was hesitant and halting; it was harder to ask than it was to call time of death for the patients who died under his care.

Meredith's shoulders started to shake again, but she shied away when he moved towards her. She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, curling forward a little as if she wanted to become as small as possible. "I _know _she tried to kill herself," she said quietly. "She sat on the kitchen floor and slit her wrists with a scalpel, Derek."

The words were a punch to the gut, and it was all he could do to stay standing. "You were there," he said, unable to keep the horror out of his voice.

She nodded.

"You were there when it happened."

"Yes."

Derek shook his head, numb and disbelieving. "Your mother actually slit her wrists in front of you when you were five years old?" He scrubbed his hands roughly over his face, scraping away the tears that had pooled at the corners of his eyes. "She made you see that?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

"Shut up," whispered Meredith, turning around. "Shut up, shut up. Just…" Her face was a contrast of pale white and angry red, and her lower lip trembled dangerously. She clutched at her towel, balling it in her fists. "Yes, I was there, okay? I was there when she slit her wrists. I was the one who had to call an ambulance to come and get her. And I sat with her under the table, and she talked to me while she was bleeding all over the floor and on my clothes, and it got under my fingernails and on my socks and _everywhere_." Meredith shook her head, tugging at the sopping ends of her hair. "So what she wrote in the diary doesn't mean she was just thinking about it. Or that she had a bad day or whatever. She actually did it. And I was there, and I can't... I just… Please, please, please stop asking. Please. I can't…you have to… Please."

"Okay." His eyes stung with tears, but he blinked them away. "Okay," he said again. "You don't have to say anything else. I promise." Meredith nodded and seemed to relax a little. Derek sighed, pulling her into his arms. Hers flopped limply to her sides, but he just held her tighter, not knowing what else to do. "You're shaking," he whispered at last as the cold from her body seeped through his clothes to chill him as well. "Let's find you something warmer than a towel," he urged, seizing onto something, anything concrete he could do to help her.

She took a single stumbling step towards the door and came to a halt as if she'd forgotten how to walk. He didn't blame her. Just hearing her recount the experience had set the ground to seesawing violently beneath his feet as if the whole world had come unhinged. He scooped her up, fumbling with the doorknob to get the door open without dropping her, and carried her across the hall into their room. Meredith had let go of the towel, and it fell to the floor as he released her. She sat there naked at the foot of the bed, the tiny hairs on her arms standing straight up and her nipples puckering from the cold, and he couldn't even let his eyes rake over her in the sort of slow, appreciative stare the sight of her without clothes usually warranted. He was too distracted by the emptiness in her eyes. The intense passion and upset of just a few minutes before had vanished and left what felt like a hollow shell in its place.

He brushed a hand gently over her hair before turning away to pull a thick pair of sweatpants and her old, gray Dartmouth t-shirt out of a drawer. She was still sitting there immobile at the foot of the bed when he returned with them, and he looked from her to the clothes, wondering if he would have to dress her. He'd never seen her quite like this before.

"Come on," he said at last, shaking out the sweatpants. When Meredith made no move to take them, he dropped down to his knees in front of her and slipped her feet into the pant legs. She brushed his hands away by the time he reached her thighs.

"I can dress myself," she snapped, standing up and pulling them on the rest of the way herself. "I'm not an invalid or whatever."

Derek just nodded and relinquished the shirt to her as well. The bedsprings squeaked as he sat down beside her. His own shirt was still damp, but he didn't bother with changing it. It seemed irrelevant. He reached out and grabbed her hand, weaving their fingers together. He suddenly felt unsure of how to talk to her.

"What do you want to do?" he asked quietly. "I want to help you. You don't have to talk right now if it's too much, but…what do you want to do?"

"I want to go to sleep," said Meredith. Her voice was a hollow monotone, and it made him miss the usual inflections she gave her speech. The little things that made her Meredith. Derek sighed, glancing at the clock on the bedside table and then back at his silent girlfriend. He didn't know this Meredith. He didn't know how to begin to help her.

"Okay," he said. They would do this her way; he had no alternative so suggest. He stood up again, stripping to his boxers and pulling on an old, faded t-shirt. By the time he returned from relieving himself in the bathroom, Meredith was already under the covers. She lay curled up on her side, staring blankly at the empty room. Derek turned out the lights and moved towards her in the darkness, dragging her hips back a little so that he was spooning her. He kissed her neck and caught hold of her hand. "I'm glad you let me read it," he whispered. "That's not something you should have to go through on your own." She didn't say anything back, but he thought she gave the tiniest nod of her head.

He tried to sleep then, wrapped around her cold body with his lips against the wet locks of her hair. He closed his eyes and held her close. She was cold and small and sinking in his arms. Perfectly immobile like she wasn't really there at all, and he rubbed his hands over her chilled skin as if that would bring her warmth back. He listened to her draw in each breath and felt her heartbeat through her back and his chest until exhaustion caught him and he couldn't stay awake.

_Derek had her in his arms, and the stream from the shower was a bitter torrent against the two of them. He tried to shut it off, but the faucet was gone. The water wouldn't stop. He turned his back to the spray, curling forward to keep it from touching Meredith. She was so small and spooned against him, so small and in his arms. He had to keep her safe. He held her tighter and breathed in; for a moment everything was lavender and warmth. Life. Like the sun in the morning. But the shower wouldn't stop, and the water kept rising. It crept past his calves, his knees, his thighs. By the time it reached his chest, his arms were numb from the cold, but still he held her. Her hair was wet against his neck, clawing at him. Her skin was slick with water, and it kept climbing higher. They would go under soon, and she was frozen to his chest. _

_Panic gripped him, but Meredith slept on. She had to wake up while they still had a chance. Before it was too late, and the whole world became water. She could swim like a fish. Like a freaking fish. She could save herself if she'd only try. He touched her cheek, but she didn't stir. She paid no attention to her name. Dead. Or dying. His Meredith. Grief was a silent scream that filled his mind, and the water paid no heed. It slipped past his shoulders and tickled his chin. It poured into his ears and still it kept rising. _

_He held her tighter, hoisting her above the waterline. He would protect her. The world was pale blue and ice cold now, and he held her tighter until she wasn't there. He scrambled to find her, diving down deep. Had the water taken her back? His arms swept up again and found nothing there. Gone. He'd lost her._

_Grief was a silent scream that sounded like her name. _

Derek started awake, his heart pounding in his chest. He'd been dreaming. Only dreaming. It was a nightmare, nothing more. He rubbed his hands over his face, trying to wipe the memory away, but it clung to him resolutely. A bitter residue tainting the night. He rolled towards Meredith desperate to hold her, but there was no one there. Her side of the bed was empty, the sheets cold. Derek squinted bleary eyed in the darkness, feeling the first prickling of panic as his gaze swept over the room before he caught sight of her in the chair by the window. Meredith sat with her legs drawn up close to her chest, her cheek resting against her knees. The blinds were cracked open, and she stared out at the street, not seeming to notice that he had woken. He glanced at the clock at their bedside. Ten after midnight. He hadn't been out that long, but he had no doubt she'd sit there all night if he let her. Derek groaned and rolled out of bed, the springs squeaking beneath him.

"Meredith…" He whispered her name; it seemed too late for loud voices. A hush hung in the air, and he could hear the soft, constant patter of the rain from outside. "How long have you been up?" He crouched down in front of her, seeking out her eyes. They seemed distant and far away.

She shrugged and looked out at the rain. "Awhile."

He frowned. "Define awhile."

"I never really went to sleep."

Derek ran his hand over her ankle, needing to feel her skin. The memory of her disappearing from his arms was still too recent. Fresh like a snapshot in his mind. "You need sleep," he said.

"Can't," she sighed.

He nodded. "Do you want to talk about it?"

She lifted her head and looked at him, offering up a ghost of a smile. "You're being perfect and wonderful, and it's lovely, really, but…" Her voice trembled a little, and her gaze swung back to the window as if the rain had a magnetic pull on her. She sniffled. "I don't really know what there is to say."

She wouldn't come to him on her own, he knew that. But he leaned forward and scooped her from the chair, pulling her to the ground and into his lap. She didn't fight him. The weight of her against his chest was the perfect relief after the horror of his nightmare, and he pressed his lips to the top of her head, savoring the closeness. Her skin was still cold, her hair still damp, and he held her closer to give her his warmth. They were silent for a long time, but, just as Derek was about to suggest they try going back to bed, he felt Meredith stir.

"I ruined it," she said in a tiny, halting whisper, words almost lost beneath the hushed drumming of the rain.

"No… Ruined what?" He rocked her in his arms.

"It. All of it. She would've been happy."

"Your mother?"

Meredith nodded and straightened up, twisting around to look at him. There were no tears in her eyes, and her voice was calm and measured. "Do you think Richard would've left Adele if I didn't exist?"

"Meredith, I don't…" Panic swept over him as he searched for the answer that would make her believe she wasn't worthless. She cut him off before he could even begin to make sense of his thoughts.

"Would you have left Addison for me if I had a kid? Some other man's kid?"

His mind hummed wildly. "Of course."

Meredith rolled her eyes at him. "Don't tell me what you think I want to hear. Think about it, Derek. If I had some other man's kid." Her voice was stabbing, insistent. Some other man's kid. His jaw clenched at the thought of her pregnant when it wasn't his. When they still couldn't talk openly about having a baby together themselves. He grabbed her hips harder than necessary, his fingers biting into her flesh. She stared at him. "Would you still love me?" she demanded. "If I had a baby, and it wasn't yours…" He closed his eyes; it was as if she could read his mind. "I know you'd hate it. You already look sick, and we're only talking hypothetical here."

"Meredith…" He swallowed hard. "I'd be okay with it."

"Really?" She rocked back on her heels. "So, if instead of Izzie sleeping down the hall, there was a child, you wouldn't care? You would raise someone else's kid just so you could be with me?"

"Yes," he said, trying to reach back into the realm of possibility and decide if that was the truth. He thought it was.

Meredith was still regarding him skeptically. "You're sure you wouldn't care? Tell me the truth."

Derek sighed, running his hands up and down her arms. "I'd care," he admitted. "But I would only care that someone else got to have a child with you when I didn't." Meredith bit her lip, her eyes flitting away from his face. Derek reached out and cupped her chin in his hand, guiding her gaze back to meet his own. "Listen to me. I wouldn't resent you for your past, and I could never resent the child. Never. It would be a part of you, and I love you, so I would love the child too."

"Even though it wasn't yours…"

"Even though it wasn't mine."

"I don't…" Meredith shook her head. Moonlight filtered through the slats in the blinds to streak her face, illuminating the doubt in her eyes. "I… Everything would be different. Everything. The way we met… In a _bar? _Seriously, Derek?" She let out a hollow, disbelieving laugh. "I'd leave my five year old home by herself so I could go out and get wasted? It wouldn't have happened. We might have never even got together! And if somehow we still had…" She exhaled loudly, crossing her arms just beneath her breasts. Her voice was sad and serious. "We've had a hard enough time fixing things with just us. It would have been damn near impossible if there was a kid, and I just… I never would've got to have this. Us. There'd be no us, and you'd probably still have a wife."

"You don't know that for certain."

"I do know it!" She scooted backwards off his lap, putting distance between them like a challenge. "I'm _that_ kid. Why won't you just admit it?"

He ignored the way she baited him with her words, biting so he would snap back. Instead, he plucked at her hand, picking it up and kissing each knuckle in turn. Her skin was still so cold. She tried to shy away from the kindness and withdraw her hand, but he tightened his grip. "Because you want me to tell you that it's your fault, Meredith, and it's not," said Derek. He kept his voice low, drawing out each word in an effort to make her understand. "It's not your fault. None of it is. You are the only one who is completely innocent in all of this. You were _five._ Your parents had one job: to love you and keep you safe. It's their fault that they failed, not yours."

"I was okay," she said hastily. "I was—"

"No," he cut her off, pressing his fingertips against her lips. "You had to watch your mother slit her wrists. That did not make you feel loved, and that did not make you feel safe." Meredith's eyes filled suddenly with tears, and he watched as she tried and failed to blink them away. Three fat droplets went rolling down her cheeks, and he caught each one with his thumb.

_You broke her. _

She trembled at his touch and looked away.

_Every good thing Meredith is happened despite you. _

Something clicked into place like he'd focused a camera, and the room felt cold. The things he would say to Ellis if she was still alive and lucid… The things that someone should have said to her. They burned in the back of Derek's mind, and his voice came out rougher than intended. "How long did you stay feeling that way?"

"What?"

"Unloved," said Derek quietly, softening the way he spoke to her. His hand moved from her cheek to run back through the damp strands of her hair. "And unsafe."

She shook her head fiercely, and he knew that he was right. This was important. "Derek, drop it. Please drop it."

He drew her closer, pulling her back to him. This was important. "Tell me," he said, letting his fingers graze the ends of her hair. He kissed her cheek, her lips, her throat. "How long did it last? You can tell me." She closed her eyes, as remote in her beauty as a star, and it made him ache. Derek slid his hands up her body, tracing every curve. Her heart thumped against his palm. "Tell me," he whispered.

Meredith bit her lip, eyes still shut. They listened to the silence and the rain.

"It never really went away," she said at last. Her voice was thin and fractured like ice run through with cracks.

"Never?" His heart plummeted.

"Except when you and I…" Meredith opened her eyes, green and gray and sorrowful, and immediately looked away. "When we're together." She placed an emphasis on the last word that had him raising his eyebrows.

"_Together_, together?"

She let out a little hum of acknowledgement, but still wouldn't meet his eyes. "After."

"Meredith…"

She shook her head and wiped hastily at her eyes. "It's stupid. God, that's really stupid. Just ignore me."

"It's not stupid," said Derek. "Not at all, but I always love you." He could see her jaw working and her body felt rigid in his arms, as if she was caught up in a physical struggle to keep every thought and feeling locked safely away inside her. "Not just after sex. You know that, right?"

"Yes." Her voice was stubborn and petulant; yes sounded rather like no.

He tilted his head to the side, waiting. "Mer…"

"Well, it's the only part of the whole relationship whatever I'm any good at!" she blurted out, finally meeting his eyes again. "I wouldn't blame you if you did."

Derek blinked at her in disbelief; sometimes, the paths Meredith's thoughts took inside her mind were near impossible for him to follow. She was pouting, her cheeks flushed, looking caught between upset and embarrassed. He grinned, trying to lighten her mood. "Any good at? Give yourself some more credit," he said, winking at her. "Try very good. Excellent. Mind-blowing, even." That drew the tiniest of smiles from her, and the sight of it there after all her tears was better than any surgical high. "But it's not the only part of us that you get right," said Derek. Her smile shifted towards skeptical, but she didn't look away. He placed his hands on her knees, rubbing them through the thick fabric of her sweatpants. "I'm happy just to be near you," he said.

"Because you love me?" she said slowly, sounding as if she was testing out the idea. Her smile had already faded again, and she was chewing mercilessly on her lower lip. There was a part of her that was still five years old and surrounded by her mother's blood. Unloved and unsafe. He knew that now. He could see it in every last doubt that shadowed her eyes, and it terrified him. That was the part of her that had wanted to drown in the bay. Would it ever go away? Unloved and unsafe. It could never happen again. He leaned in and brushed his mouth against hers to free it from her teeth; he was the one who had to keep her safe.

"Because I love you," he agreed.

Meredith stared at him, a hint of a smile returning to lurk quietly around the corners of her mouth. The green in her eyes darkened and turned desirous. He wasn't surprised when she grabbed the hem of her shirt and peeled it off; he recognized the look on her face. Meredith wanted. Or needed, really. After what she'd said, he was certain need was a better fit than want. Her hair had been caught up in the neck of her shirt, but it fell forgotten to the floor and countless strands of gold and brown rained back down over her bare shoulders. Light fell through the slats in the blinds, striping her skin with ribbons of shadow and silvery light. She traced the line of his jaw, ending her journey at his mouth.

"Please?" she asked.

He kissed her fingertips, and that was all the permission she waited for. Her lips came down over his, deepening the kiss until her mouth met his with the great, gaping need of the starving. He smiled against her lips; her impatience was palpable. But too soon she was the riptide pulling him under, and he lost his smile to kiss her back with equal force, growing as desperate for her body as the asphyxiated are for oxygen. The room rippled with urgency. She clawed at his shirt, and he left her lips reluctantly to let her strip it from him.

With the fabric gone, Meredith leaned closer, pressing herself flat against his chest. She still hadn't lost the chill from the shower, and her skin was so cold it jarred him. He brushed her hair back to expose her neck, and the strands felt damp and heavy against his palm. Her skin was cold, her hair was wet; she was pale blue and ice cold. Depressed and drowning. He clamped down on the thought and kissed her mouth instead. She was rubbing against him, and there was warmth there. A burning, kindling need that spread and spread. How he wanted her. His hand slipped down the front of her sweatpants. Her thighs were as cold as they'd been in his dream, but he sought the heat between her legs. How he wanted her warm and alive.

Meredith's fingers danced along the elastic of his boxers and she raked her fingernails over him, over the silk. Her hands were cold but her mouth was hot, and she kissed him again and again, swallowing the groans that slipped past his lips. Her tongue dueled with his. Warm and alive. She was warm and alive.

"The bed?" asked Derek, mumbling the words into her mouth, but she was already wriggling out of her pants. She stopped bothering with them once they reached her ankles and went for his boxers instead.

"No," said Meredith, shaking her head. "Here." Every motion was frantic and urgent; she shoved his boxers down just far enough to set him free. Derek leaned back against the chair and pulled her towards him. "Right now," she said. "Now, now…" She drew up on her knees, looking straight at him. Her eyes were vibrant, one in shadow and one in light. The slats in the blinds striped her skin in pale blue and white. Her hands braced against his chest. She was so cold today. "I need you now," she whispered, lowering herself onto him in one swift plunge of her hips. Warmth enveloped him. She was alive.

She set the rhythm as she slid against him, bringing him into warmth and life and heat again and again. He had her thighs, her hips, her breasts. He held their weight in the palms of his hands, and still she was so cold. So wet. So hot. So cold. The contrast was madness. Like fire and ice. Wasn't that a… His mind dragged when she moaned his name; he loved her voice. A poem. Robert Frost, yes. He'd read that.

_Some say the world will end in fire_.

She clenched around him, always moving. Fire, yes, in fire.

_Some say in ice_.

He kissed her neck, tasting the chill there. Her hair clawed at him, cold and damp and drowning. In ice. She would say in ice. She would go down silently. The lines of blue danced over her body as she rolled against him like a wave, and he was crushed beneath her by desire. This was surely drowning, and yet he wanted more. What came next? He struggled for the answer through the throbbing spiral of hot and cold she wove around him with every roll of her hips. He kissed her again, their mouths wide open and barely meeting, and the words fell into place.

_From what I've tasted of desire_

They gasped for the same air. Her eyes were glassy and dark with lust. What had he tasted of desire? Meredith arched her back in one long, glorious curve, her hands reaching behind her to grip his legs. He caught her hips and held her steady, fingers biting into cold skin as his mouth found her breasts. Her skin was cold as ice and yet there was a fire. What had he tasted of desire? Only this.

Again and again she moved over him until the room was burning, the throbbing in his groin incessant. Some say the world will end. Some say… He slipped a hand between her legs, and Meredith let out a hitching, whining moan.

_But if I had to perish twice… _

He sucked in air, digging in his heels at the very edge of the precipice, fighting off the urge to go spinning headfirst into ecstasy. Oblivion. Some say the world will end. Still, she wasn't there. Not yet. Not yet. This was death, surely this was death; but she had died, and that wasn't this. She had died, but never again. She would not go under while she was his to hold. He wouldn't let her perish twice. He worked his thumb in a spiral until he felt her begin to spasm around him. Alive. He would keep her safe.

She was warm when she finally came, and he lost his mind.

How would he perish?

In fire. It all would end in fire.

-----

_So yeah, we finally got to hear Derek's take on the diary. That was a lot of fun for me to explore. He really just wants to be able to be there for Mer. But, she's never done anything like this with him before. It's one thing for her to talk about her mother's suicide attempt with Dr. Wyatt. She's talking to a therapist. Even if she's never shared this before, she has a general sense of how the interaction should go. There's something there to guide her. But…sharing this secret with Derek? There are no guidelines for that, nothing to follow. She's never been stripped so completely bare in front of him before. He's never seen her so exposed. That was one of the reasons I really wanted him to find her in the shower __(other than the obvious chance for yummy Elliot Bay parallels) __because he was fully clothed and she was stripped down to her skin, and to me that kinda echoes how she is the one who's the most vulnerable in that scene, the one who's exposing her darkest secrets. She's confessed her mother's suicide attempt to Derek, hiding nothing from him for a change. And he's still playing things pretty close to the vest when it comes to sharing some of his own demons with her. Or something like that. I don't know. I like to analyze. And that's about it. Or there's more, but I'm too tired to think about it. One way or the other, thanks for reading! And, in case I don't update again between now and Christmas, Merry Christmas! _


	8. Chapter 7

_Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a wonderful New Year's Eve. Thank you for all the Merry Christmas wishes from the last chapter. I had a great Christmas. I hope you all had a lovely holiday too! And as usual, many thanks to all who took the time to comment on this fic. I appreciate it so much and love to get the chance to hear what people think about the story. It really motivates me to keep writing, so thank you so much! And, here's the latest chapter. I hope you enjoy it!_

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The sun was rising, and she wished it wouldn't. Everything looked different by daylight. The sky was turning pale pink outside, and it slipped its glow in through the half opened blinds. She could see the bed she'd left and Derek fast asleep on his stomach, an arm slung out over her side of the bed as if he meant to hold her. Meredith watched the gentle rise and fall of his back and smiled to herself. It was a relief not to see the worry she had put in his eyes; he looked peaceful with his hair disheveled and his face pressed to the pillow. But the sun was rising, and he would wake. She stifled a yawn and looked away. Their clothes were still scattered on the floor, his shirt lying right next to her sweatpants. The towel he'd wrapped her in was hidden just out of eyesight; she'd passed it earlier when she had tiptoed to her robe. When dawn had been nothing more than some distant, unsettling prospect and the sound of Derek's slow steady breathing had kept her company in the silent darkness. Meredith fought off another yawn and tightened the belt on her robe. Her eyes felt too dry, her eyelids too heavy. If she got up now and slipped back into bed, she could have a good fifteen minutes of sleep before the alarm went off. Derek could wake up with her in his arms and worry a little less than he would if he found her still sitting in the chair by the window. And maybe, just maybe the morning would feel normal. Groggy and too early and just like it was supposed to be. But there was a wakefulness that had followed her all through the night, paying her exhaustion no heed. Her mind was wild and alive with thoughts. Her mother had slit her wrists, and now Derek knew. She had no clue what came next.

She glanced longingly back at him, but gravity seemed to be too much; she couldn't bring herself to get up and climb into bed beside Derek. She watched the clock instead. Fifteen minutes until the alarm went off had somehow already whittled down to thirteen, and she was no closer to knowing how to act. Four years of college and four years of med school under her belt, and she had never pulled a more unsuccessful all nighter. Meredith bowed her head and yawned again. She could be okay with this. She had to be okay with it, there really wasn't any other option. Her fingers slid purposefully up her neck, pressing flat against her carotid artery as she imagined the sharp edged surety of a scalpel's slice. It would've taken seconds to die. She felt her pulse fluttering against her fingertips like a caged bird trying to fly. It would've taken seconds. Meredith pulled her hand away from her neck and stared at her wrist. Her mother hadn't really wanted to die. That was what therapy said. She remembered how happy she'd felt when she had told Dr. Wyatt. Almost vindicated in a way. Her mother hadn't really wanted to die; she'd done the right thing when she called 911. She would love to still feel so happy. Her mother had wanted Richard, not death. She told herself again and again until the words became a mantra and the bed slid out of focus.

She wasted her fifteen minutes, and when the alarm finally went off, she was still curled up in the armchair. Meredith shook herself out of her daze, cursing softly. It was too late to consider a wild lunge for the alarm clock. Derek was already awake and rolling over to shut it off himself. The beeping stopped and he groaned, yawning into his hands as he rubbed them over his face. His hair jutted out at odd angles and there was a groggy confusion to the way he moved. Too soon, it fell away, and Meredith winced when he looked at her. His eyes were dark with concern and his usual sleepy morning smile was a frown.

He coughed and his voice grumbled out from somewhere low in his throat. "Please tell me you haven't been sitting there all night."

She smiled uncertainly and avoided his eyes, toying with the tie to her robe. There was no good answer to that.

"Meredith…" he pressed.

"Good morning," she tried, her voice quiet.

Derek propped himself up on an elbow, ignoring her offering. "Did you sleep at all?"

She sighed and uncurled herself from the armchair. This was why she should have laid down beside him again before the alarm went off; he wasn't going to let it go. Meredith shuffled towards him, perching on the edge of the bed. She could still try anyway. "How did you sleep?" she asked sweetly, reaching out to flatten an errant curl and smooth it towards his scalp.

"Don't do that," he said, catching her hand and kissing her wrist. She wished he was just talking about his hair. "Did you sleep?"

She looked at the headboard, her knees, the pillows, and finally, reluctantly, his eyes. He didn't miss the tiny shake of her head, and she watched the worry roll in like storm clouds across his face.

"You could've woke me up," said Derek.

"Again?"

"Of course again."

Meredith frowned. "Would good would that have done? Then both of us would be tired and crabby." He shook his head as if to say her worries were silly, inconsequential little things, he'd gladly be tired and crabby with her. She thought maybe he really would, and that was strange too.

"Is that how you are this morning?" he asked.

"Is that what?"

"Tired and crabby. Is that how you feel?"

A yawn nearly cracked her jaw in two, and she turned away, covering her mouth with her hand. She swung her leg back and forth off the edge of the bed, scuffing her big toe against the carpet. "I guess so," she mumbled. It certainly seemed logical after a night with no sleep. She could act tired and crabby if that would bring them a step closer to normal. Her real feelings were too hard to explain. It was like she was groping around in her purse in the dark, trying to identify things just by touch only every time she managed to grab onto something, she couldn't name what she felt to save her life.

"Okay," said Derek. She felt his arm snake around her waist and, next thing she knew, she was toppling towards him. The mattress was soft beneath her, but she stiffened and hugged her chest. "Now give me the real answer. How bad is it today?"

She recognized the question. He'd asked it of her before in the days following her mother's death. They asked it of their patients every day. How bad is it today? It. The pain. The problem. The thing that's wrong with you. He knew things now. He knew the it that was wrong with her, and somehow, inexplicably, he seemed to want to stick around. It should feel wonderful, but it just felt confusing.

"It's okay," said Meredith. It was a wishful promise to herself as much as it was an answer to his question. Her mother had wanted Richard, not death, and so it was okay, wasn't it? She managed something that felt like a smile and forced herself to meet his eyes. "I really am just tired. I'll be okay." He brushed a hand over her hair before settling it palm to cheek against her face.

"You're exhausted, Mer." His thumb stroked the skin beneath her eyes, and she could imagine the dark circles there. She hadn't dared so much as a single glance in a mirror yet, but the hours of crying and the sleepless night couldn't have painted a very pretty picture. "And you don't have to try to be okay about this overnight," he said quietly, still petting her skin. He sounded sad and very earnest. "This is something it's okay to not be okay about. Last night was hard on you."

"No," she said swiftly as his words sent her heart racing. "I have to be okay." She felt suddenly flushed and overheated. She hoped like hell she wasn't blushing. Last night had been hard on her, yes, but the morning was starting to feel harder still in a different way. It was difficult to accept how completely he'd seen her come apart. Embarrassing if she thought about it even a little. He'd had to pick out her pajamas for her like she was a child. He'd seen her cry and shake and overreact. And she'd told him things she didn't begin to know how to discuss by the light of day. They were lying face to face like they always did, but the familiar felt strange and new and foreign. She hated that she wasn't even sure how to look in his eyes anymore. Meredith rolled away from his touch and glanced at the clock for a way out. It didn't let her down. "I have to be at the hospital for pre-rounds in forty minutes," she said as she scrambled back up into a sitting position. "I don't have time to be not okay. I should already be in the shower."

"A hot shower," said Derek. If he'd meant it as some dark and morbid joke, it would've been okay. She knew how to respond to things like that. But she looked at the deep lines of concern creasing his brow and all the worry welled up in his eyes, and she knew it wasn't a joke. He was completely serious. Some part of him actually thought she might be headed off for a repeat performance of last night's cold, depressing shower. Meredith hunched her shoulders defensively and rolled her eyes.

"Yes, Derek. A hot shower," she snapped.

He sighed wearily and scooted backwards, leaning against the headboard. "Don't do this," he said. "Don't shut me out. Shut the rest of the world out if you have to, but not me." The sheet cut low across his abdomen, and she studied it instead of his face. She wanted to curl up against his bare chest and pretend the only part of last night there was to remember was the really great sex. Her heart twinged with something she thought might be guilt, but he knew things about her now, and she'd never be able to take her secrets back. She couldn't unsay them. She tried to meet his eyes and had to look away. If this was what actual intimacy was, was it supposed to feel so unsettling?

"We can talk about it later, okay?" she said, thrusting the words out like an olive branch. Later. Once she'd figured out how to be okay with just how much she'd let him see. How to look into his eyes and not want to blush or cringe or both. She rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom without waiting for his answer.

He joined her as she was wrapping a towel like a turban around her hair, finished with the five minute shower she'd perfected during her intern year. Steam hung in the air and the mirror was fogged over, but Meredith swallowed the sarcastic commentary on just how hot her shower had been when he handed her a mug full of coffee. He wouldn't find it funny anyway.

"Thanks," she murmured, breathing in the familiar, welcome aroma before taking a cautionary sip.

"Careful," said Derek. "It's pretty hot."

"Mmm," she said. It was, but it was so, so delicious. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, taking a moment to try and shake off the exhaustion.

"So, I've been thinking," said Derek. She nodded, setting the mug down on the sink and searching for his eyes in the mirror. It was too fogged over to find them, and she turned around instead.

"Yeah?"

"You could call in sick today," he said. He didn't even bother to make it a question, and she bristled at the decisiveness in his voice.

"Why on earth would I call in sick today?"

"Last night was hard," he said, touching her shoulder. She pursed her lips and waited. The unrelenting rhythm of go, go, go she had slipped into upon realizing she had exactly forty minutes to make it from a robe in her bedroom to collecting her interns at the hospital had reduced the memory of the previous night to the sort of dull residual ache she had plenty of experience functioning with. But one sentence from Derek was enough to send it flaring up again in full force like a troubled sore. She felt the beginnings of a headache starting up behind her eyes, and all of her internal organs seemed to be trembling; she was as stable as a cheap cup of hospital jello. Meredith yawned again, and her headache ratcheted up from tentative to definite. "And you didn't get any sleep," added Derek.

She shrugged and turned back around, opening the medicine cabinet. "I'm a surgeon. No sleep is hardly a novel experience," she said. It was supposed to sound comforting, but it came out sharp and irritated. She blamed the headache. "Give me another cup of coffee, and I'll be good to go," she said, snatching the Tylenol from where it sat on the shelf between a bottle of the ridiculously expensive imported mousse Derek used on his hair and her birth control pills. She stared at the open cabinet for a long, bleary-eyed moment before remembering to grab her pills as well. She punched one out and swallowed it quickly. The last thing she needed was a surprise pregnancy.

"I know you're used to no sleep," said Derek, shuffling closer and placing his hands on her shoulders. He pressed his lips to the top of her head. "I'm just saying that, all things considered, it wouldn't be a bad idea to take today off."

"Why?" Meredith demanded, wrestling with the Tylenol bottle. She gave it an angry shake. The two little arrows were perfectly aligned, and the damned cap still wasn't coming off. "You don't think I can do my job?"

"I think you have a lot to deal with," said Derek. The fog had cleared from the mirror enough for her to see his face, and the usual sparkle in his blue eyes had gone dark. Meeting his gaze felt too much like staring into troubled waters. "Your mother tried to kill herself. You have a right to some time."

She looked away, turning her attention to the stubborn bottle of Tylenol. "My mother slit her wrists when I was five," she said tersely. "I've been dealing with what she did for most of my life now. I don't need a day to myself to think about it."

"I could stay home too," he offered.

"Oh yeah? So we can do this all day?" Meredith rolled her eyes and gave a determined yank on the Tylenol bottle. The cap came flying off, and white pills scattered everywhere, cascading down the sink bowl and over the bathroom floor. "Fuck," she said, dropping the nearly emptied bottle into the sink as well. She leaned forward, her forehead coming to rest against the mirror. "Fucking… fuck," she muttered, bumping her head against the glass. Her headache was a beast behind her eyes, and she scraped three pills out of the basin, washing them down with a gulp of coffee. That probably qualified as disgusting, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Derek had already seen her start sobbing while naked and dripping wet. Witnessing her less than sterile dealings with a bottle of Tylenol seemed inconsequential after that, like comparing mountains to molehills. Or was it makingmountains out of molehills? The comparing was with apples and oranges, right? Some fruit thing… Whatever. She picked up the emptied Tylenol bottle and started dropping the spilt pills back in. They made little pinging sounds as they hit the plastic, and she found it irritating.

"Hey, it's okay," soothed Derek. "Take a breath, Mer. I just think it wouldn't hurt to stay home given what you've been through."

Meredith whirled around, glaring at him. "I'm over it, alright?" she said. "Stop worrying. I'm good." Tylenol stuck to the bottoms of her bare feet, and it felt like her brain was bashing itself repeatedly against her skull. She unwound the towel from her head and started finger combing the tangles from her hair. Derek just stood there watching her, radiating something that felt an awful lot like disappointment. She sucked in a breath and frowned to stave off the guilt. That was the way it always seemed to work; he got disappointed and she got guilty. Like she was to blame for being dedicated to her job; she couldn't begin to figure out how that made her the failure. "Don't you have a shower to be taking or something?" she asked, not bothering to hide her irritation.

"Meredith!" snapped Derek. Her name came out harsh and exasperated. His tone startled her, and her hand froze halfway through her hair. She could see his frustration in the way he clenched his jaw. He got that way at work sometimes, usually when an intern did something incredibly stupid like forget to pick up a critical batch of tests from the lab for one of his patients. He wasn't supposed to get that way with her though. Not over this. Not when _he_ was the one with the incredibly stupid idea that she stay home from work. Meredith folded her arms over her chest and watched as he raked a hand back through his hair, exhaling loudly. When he spoke again, his voice was somewhat gentler. "You read what I can really only describe as your mother's suicide note last night," said Derek. "Don't tell me it didn't affect you. That's just insulting my intelligence."

She stared at him, lips pursed together and her hands on her hips. The Tylenol trapped under her feet was driving her crazy, and her head was still pounding. All she wanted was for him to drop his incredibly stupid idea. To just let something go for once. She wanted to shut the diary out of her thoughts so that she could concentrate on work and have a chance of making it through the day in one piece. That was all she wanted, but the concern pooled behind his eyes was wrecking havoc on her resolve. She caved and brushed her fingers lightly over his forearm.

"Look," she sighed. "I read it, yeah. And you're right. You don't know how much I wish she hadn't done it." She squeezed the last of the excess water from her hair and let the damp strands fall back against the nape of her neck. "I have to keep getting ready," she added, hanging her towel up on its hook. Meredith walked back into their bedroom and left the door open for him to follow. She draped her robe over the bed and fished around in a drawer for a clean bra and panties. Her back was turned, but she started talking again when she heard the door click shut. Her mother had wanted Richard, not death. She could go through that again for him. Maybe it would help them both. "You don't have to worry though," she said gently. "I'm okay with it. She didn't really want to die."

"What are you talking about?" asked Derek. He sounded bewildered.

Meredith turned around, hopping a little as she pulled on a pair of jeans. "She slit her wrists, Derek."

"I know."

"She slit her _wrists_," she said again, speaking slowly, trying to drive the point home. She waited for the realization to slide across his face the way it had for her. It didn't.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "She slit her wrists."

"But that's the thing!" said Meredith, shaking her head. She disappeared into her closet and grabbed the first sweater she spotted. There was something distinctly disappointing about his inability to grasp the significance of her words. She sighed and reemerged from the closet, pulling the sweater on over her head. "She was a surgeon," she said, trying to explain. To communicate and use her words. Dr. Wyatt would be proud. But even though Derek nodded, he kept staring at her as if she was a particularly dire CT scan. His eyes were dark, more black than blue. "She was an excellent surgeon," she said.

Derek nodded again. "Yeah."

"An extraordinary surgeon."

"I know," he said.

"So why would she slit her wrists if she really wanted to die?" said Meredith. "She was an excellent, extraordinary surgeon; she knew all about death. She knew what would guarantee success and what wouldn't." She dropped to her knees, fishing under the bed for her boots. "Her carotid artery," she called out. "That would've taken seconds." She heard the bedsprings groan and, when she scooted back out from beneath the bed, Derek was sitting there in front of her. He was leaning forward, his hands clasped together and his eyebrows knit into a single dismal line.

"You think she would've cut her carotid artery if…" he began.

"If she really wanted to die? Yes," said Meredith emphatically, jamming her foot into her boot harder than necessary. "Slit wrists are for gloomy adolescents who don't know any better. Ellis Grey knew better."

"Meredith, I'm not sure that—"

"No," said Meredith, pulling on her other boot. "I'm right. I know my mother."

Derek shook his head. "But why?" he asked. "Why else would she put herself through that? Put you through that?"

Meredith stood up, the corners of her mouth twitching into a dry smile. She had an answer for that. "Richard," she said simply. It was always Richard. "You read what she wrote. You know how miserable she was without him. She wanted him back." She looked down at Derek, expecting him to nod or smile or show some sign of understanding. All she saw was concern and a sort of devastated sadness that made her feel like she was naked again, crying in the shower. Meredith shifted uncomfortably, switching her weight from foot to foot. Derek stared at her, unspeaking. "Well go on," she said at last. He blinked, still mute. "You're obviously thinking something, so just say it."

He rubbed a hand over his face, looking down at the floor for a long moment before meeting her eyes again. "I don't know that she was necessarily thinking like a surgeon when she slit her wrists," he said. His voice was low and cautious like footsteps over thin ice. Meredith gave a sharp shake of her head, something tensing in her gut.

"My mother always thought like a surgeon," she said. "Always. And she didn't want to die!" Her voice escalated until she was shocked by the sound, and she took a step back from him, surprised to feel her heart pounding wildly against her chest.

"Okay," said Derek quickly. Too quickly. "She didn't want to die. You're right, Mer. You're right." Meredith frowned, her eyes narrowing. His tone was wrong. He was placating her like a child. He was actually placating her. She bit her lip and looked away. Condescending ass.

"I have to get to work," she said stiffly.

Derek ignored her comment and reached out for her hands, pulling her back to him. She stepped reluctantly into the space between his legs, her kneecaps bumping against the mattress. "You should stay," he said, staring up at her. His eyes were solemn and unsettling. When she said nothing, he wound his arms around her waist and rested his head against her stomach. "Stay home," he murmured, holding her too tightly. "For me."

Meredith settled her hands over the crown of his head, combing her fingers through his hair. She couldn't explain how the tables had turned so abruptly, but suddenly it was she who was comforting him. "I can't," she said, still stroking his hair.

"Even though you're not okay…" The words rumbled against her stomach, quieter than a whisper as if he spoke them to himself. Her hands stilled and she stood stiff as a board in his arms, saying nothing back. Slowly, Derek straightened up a little, loosening his hold on her. "You know technically I'm your boss, and I don't want you working today," he said quietly, no trace of a joke to his words.

Disbelief washed over her, cold and slimy and devastating. Meredith slithered out of his arms. "You did not just say that."

Derek sighed and reached for her hand again, but she pulled it away. "Meredith…"

"No. Do you want to know how much you'd know about me and my mother if you were just my boss?" she asked, her voice shaking. "Because you wouldn't know anything, Derek. Not a damn thing. I told you about it because you're my boyfriend, and if you think you can just turn around and use that against me—"

"I'm not using it against you!" said Derek. "I'm trying to help you."

"Then stop trying," said Meredith coldly. "Because you are about to do an incredibly stupid thing. You can't be both for this."

"I am both," said Derek. "Don't be unreasonable."

"Right…" Meredith's laughter was hollow and short-lived; she was the one being unreasonable even though he was the one eyeing her back for the best place to stick the knife. Her headache was back with a vengeance, and she felt like crying. "If you use the fact that you're my Attending to force me to stay home today, please do not think that I will have anything else to say to you." She watched the shock roll in across his face and bit down hard on her tongue to keep from dissolving into a weepy, confused mess. She didn't understand. The ground beneath her feet no longer seemed to be a given. Half of her wanted desperately for him to hold her, and the other half was still fighting the urge to slap him across the face. "Pick one," she choked out. "Who are you, Derek? My boss or my boyfriend?"

He looked down and picked up her hand in his. She watched as he turned it so her palm was up, his fingertips skating over the lines of her hand. She felt numb, so faraway from the feel of his skin against hers. It was a distant thing, and she was frightened. When Derek finally looked up again, his eyes glistened. "You know who I am," he said quietly. "I'll see you at the hospital. You're gonna be late for pre-rounds."

She didn't realize she'd been holding her breath until she heard it come out in a loud whoosh. "Yeah," she agreed. He gave a tiny, resigned nod and let go of her hand. It fell limply to her side. The silence was roaring, and Meredith didn't move. He was staring at her with moist eyes, dark as bruises, and the only thing she could read in them was fear. Derek was afraid, and she didn't understand. "I'm okay," she whispered.

His smile was fleeting, dying before it stirred anything but the farthest corners of his mouth. "Drive carefully," he said.

Meredith nodded and headed for the door, leaving Derek sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands.

She made it to the hospital without hitting a single red light, although she skated by on two that were just barely still yellow. It got her there with enough minutes to spare to wait in line at the coffee cart in the lobby, trading a few crumpled bills for her third coffee of the morning. She sipped it on her way to the locker room, finally feeling almost awake enough to qualify as normal. Or what would be normal if it weren't for the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She hated fighting with him.

George was already in the locker room, but Meredith barely registered his friendly good morning. She thought of nothing save Derek as she peeled off her street clothes and dug out her scrubs. He was forcing her to feel too many things all at once. It was disorienting at best, like trying to color a picture using every freaking crayon in the box at the same time; anger lay right next to love and on top fear and guilt and frustration, while a squiggle of confusion ran across the whole page. The colors blurred together, turning ugly and muddled. The mess consumed her, and she didn't remember she'd left things weird with Cristina too until she pulled her scrub top down over her head to find herself staring at her best friend.

Cristina had halted in the doorway, already dressed for the day's work, as her gaze glossed over George to settle on Meredith. "Hello Meredith," she said. It sounded stilted and far too formal.

Their conversation from the night before came flooding back on top of everything else, and Meredith couldn't manage a smile. "Hey," she said.

Cristina took a single step into the room and stopped. The distance between them could've fit a gurney. Maybe two. Her eyes narrowed skeptically as she studied Meredith. "What's wrong with you?" she asked.

Meredith shook her head. "Nothing." Everything. I don't know.

"Right…" said Cristina, smothering the single syllable in sarcasm.

Meredith sighed and turned away to grab her pager. She didn't know what to say. How to say it. She found herself taking much longer than necessary to fasten the pager to her scrubs, but the longer she kept her head bowed and her eyes averted, the harder it was to turn around again. She felt alone. Painfully, exquisitely alone as if loneliness had crystallized into this bitter object she could touch and hold in her hands. She wanted to throw it against the wall and watch it shatter; she wanted to tell Cristina everything and have her understand. She could taste her secrets on the tip of her tongue, poised ready to pour out in a babbling, incoherent mess, when Cristina turned abruptly and walked out of the room without another word. Meredith looked up in time to watch the door swing shut.

"What was that?" asked George.

Meredith whirled around. She'd forgotten he was even in the room. "Don't ask," she said, dropping down to sit on the bench. The headache that had never quite gone away came pounding back like a sledgehammer to her skull, and she pinched the bridge of her nose, breathing in sharply.

"Do you feel okay?" he pressed. "You look pretty miserable."

"I feel fine," she said flatly.

"Okay, well," he shrugged into his lab coat, "if you need anything…"

She was halfway to shaking her head, hating that she was once again on the receiving end of the Poor Meredith look. Not to mention how much she hated that there actually was a look all her friends seemed to share, as if she was pathetic often enough to warrant her own facial shorthand. Poor Meredith. Poor dark and twisty Meredith. Something's always wrong with her. She pushed the thought away, attempting to stop the pity party inside her mind. The morning was a mess, and so she clung to the one thing that still felt solid and unshakeable. She was a surgeon. She was here today to save lives. "Say something surgical!" she blurted out, looking up hopefully at George. He just blinked at her, his mouth gaping open a little. "Please," she insisted.

"Uh… Well, okay." If he found her request odd, he shrugged it off quickly. "I guess there's always… Oh!" A look of sudden realization crossed his face, and he smiled warmly. "Good luck today!" Meredith could only frown back, feeling as lost as if he was speaking a foreign language. "I didn't realize it was starting so soon, but I was in the elevator with one of the nurses from admitting, and she was saying—"

"What?" interrupted Meredith. "Good luck? What are you talking about?"

"Sorry." George grimaced a little. "I know you two don't _need _good luck. You've already had success, but it's the thing to say, right?"

"We've had success," she echoed. Comprehension crept slowly up her spine like a spreading chill. They'd had success, alright. They'd danced their freaking victory dance. Naked. More than once.

But, he would've said something. Something…

Meredith stared up at George, gripping the edge of the bench hard enough to turn her knuckles white. "What _exactly_ are you talking about, George?"

"The clinical trial," he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Grass is green. Seattle is rainy. The clinical trial is underway. "Your first patient was admitted last night," George added when she stayed silent, his tone dipping towards confused.

She looked down, searching out the ground beneath her feet. It was still there, and that felt astonishing. "Last night?" she asked.

"That's just what I heard." He shuffled back and forth a few steps, the corners of his mouth curving into an uncertain little frown. "The nurse, she… I could be wrong."

"No, you're probably… You're probably right." Meredith leaned forward to grab her coffee from where it rested in her cubby, taking a long sip. It was already lukewarm at best. Her shoulders slumped, and she kicked at the ground with the toe of her shoe.

She could feel George studying her. "You're still on that, aren't you?" he asked after a moment, sounding more puzzled than anything else.

"I'm…" Five minutes ago, she would've had an automatic yes for him. She clutched her coffee cup a little tighter. She didn't know what she had now. "I think so. I don't know."

"Shepherd hasn't said anything?"

Meredith swallowed another mouthful of tepid coffee and shook her head. "No."

"Oh…" George sat down next to her, fidgeting with the sleeves of his lab coat. "Maybe he doesn't know yet? The nurse didn't say when the patient got here. Just that it was last night. It could've been late." His eyes were kind and curious when she met them, and she realized she couldn't remember the last time the two of them had talked alone about anything remotely significant.

She gave him a weak smile, feeling very far away. "Yeah. Maybe." Friendships drifted like floes of ice.

"Or maybe he wants to surprise you with it later," continued George eagerly, as if the search for the reason behind Derek's silence was something fun. A good way to pass the time.

"Yeah." Meredith snorted. "Maybe." George's eyebrows knit together at that, and she could tell he was on the verge of another question. She suddenly wanted nothing so much as she wanted the conversation to be over and done. "I'm sure it's just…whatever," she said quickly. "It's not a big deal." She shrugged and tried to pretend the words didn't hurt. "I'll figure it out."

"Definitely," agreed George, smiling at her. "I'm sure you're still on it. Shepherd wouldn't kick you off of anything." She smiled back, but it felt forced. Friendships drifted. He didn't know. "Good luck with the surgery," he said again as he stood up.

"Yeah, yeah." She nodded. "Thanks."

He mumbled something that may have been where he was going, but she'd already stopped listening. Meredith stared at the ground as the door swung shut, leaving her alone in the locker room. Her coffee was cold, but she drained the cup. She needed to get up and gather her interns, but Derek stuck like a splinter inside her mind.

_Us. Together, Mer. We're gonna do this._

The clinical trial was her baby. Their baby.

_You could call in sick today._

_You know technically I'm your boss, and I don't want you working today._

_Stay home. For me._

Meredith didn't know what to think. She sat on the bench and felt like she was falling.

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_So, this chapter is pretty much the aftermath of what happened between Meredith and Derek the night before. Meredith spent the night reliving what was probably the worst experience of her childhood, and that kept her very caught up in the moment in terms of her and Derek. But now she's had some time to calm down and reflect on what happened, and well…she's not really sure what she feels. She spilled her most carefully guarded secrets to Derek and fell apart in front of him, and it changed things. It brought them closer, but now she's kind of embarrassed. She's kind of shy. She can't just roll over and kiss him good morning like everything's normal and exactly how it used to be because it feels so different to her. But she doesn't know what she's supposed to do instead. She has zero experience with things like this to go off of, so she's flailing a little. And Derek, he's just worrying about her. Because she was a wreck last night and she didn't sleep at all and then she suddenly starts talking adamantly about how her mother didn't want to kill herself. He's not sure what to think, but he's worried. And he's really not being an ass when he tries to get her to stay home. He has his reasons, but he hasn't shared them because he thinks Mer has more than enough to deal with without adding this to the mix. Things are troubling Derek though, and he's just trying to protect her. But then he crosses the line and implies that Meredith should stay home because he's her boss and that's what he wants. And just, no. That would create a huge imbalance of power in their relationship, and I think Mer is right to get so upset over that. He's honestly just trying to look out for her, but it doesn't feel like that to her at all. She trusted him enough to tell him about her mother's suicide attempt, and now she feels as if he's using that against her in a way. So yeah, that's about it. Thanks so much for reading, and happy New Year everyone!!! _


	9. Chapter 8

_Hey, everyone! I'm so sorry this update took so long. This was a tricky chapter to write, and real life kept getting in the way. It is a long chapter though, so hopefully that helps make up for it a little. Also, an important thing to note, this chapter has a long flashback worked into the middle of it. Since it's so long, I didn't want to italicize the whole thing, and I think it's pretty obvious that it's a flashback. But just in case, it's also marked off by handy little * symbols, so if you see those just know you've found the flashback! That's about it. Thanks to everybody who took the time to share their thoughts on the last chapter! I really appreciate it!_

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Derek felt ragged as he made his way into the hospital, like some tattered sail shred by a storm. He scanned the lobby, searching for Meredith. She wasn't there. He entered the elevator full of a strange kind of hope that sunk in his gut like a stone, but she wasn't there either. His fingers twitched with nervous energy, and he had to fight off the urge to page her. She would start a fight if he did. He wasn't certain of much after the morning, but he did know that. She was as snappish as a cornered animal and apparently caring was still the wrong thing to do. Worries plagued him, and Derek found himself in the locker room without ever making a conscious decision to walk there. It was a small, handsome room, meant only for the heads of the various surgical departments, and Derek breathed in the silence and the calm as he changed into scrubs.

The door banged open as he was pulling on his lab coat, and Derek glanced up, doing a double take when he spotted one of his neurosurgical residents standing in the doorway, a heavy folder in hand. The resident was a gangly young man with oversized ears who Derek recognized immediately as Edward Hess.

"Dr. Shepherd," said Hess, taking a step into the room. "I'm sorry to bother you here, sir, but it's urgent." He spoke quickly as if trying to get the words out before he could be blamed for barging in.

Derek felt too weary for smiles, but he managed a small, polite one for the resident's sake. He liked Hess. The man was sharp and quick with a definite knack for neurosurgery. "What's the matter?" he asked.

"An unusual new admittant," said Hess. "I tried to reach you last night to get your approval, but I don't think my page went through."

"No," said Derek stiffly. "I was…unavailable then." He closed his eyes for a moment only to see Meredith standing under the freezing shower, a lifeless shell of the woman he loved. Derek jerked himself from the memory with a sharp shake of his head and frowned at Hess. "You're in your final year of residency," he said. "I trust your judgment. You want to sign a patient into my department, go ahead and do it. You shouldn't need me to hold your hand."

"I signed her into the department, sir," protested Hess. "It's just like I said though. There were unusual circumstances." His long fingers fluttered against his lab coat and he gave an apologetic smile. "A clinical trial patient has shown up, and only you can sign her into the trial. There are still several forms down in admitting that need your signature."

"A clinical trial patient?" echoed Derek, freezing halfway to fastening his pager to his scrubs. Disbelief washed over him. "The trial isn't set to start for another three weeks."

"I know, but the patient has experienced a dramatic increase in seizure activity over the past forty-eight hours. I originally had her surgery scheduled for…" Hess opened the folder he'd brought with him and flipped through the pages, "for the ninth," he read. "But her oncologist has suggested we move the date up if at all possible."

Derek nodded slowly. When he'd offered Hess Meredith's old job of tracking down and enrolling patients in the trial, he hadn't been prepared for how strange this would feel. It had seemed like the perfect solution at the time; the new hospital policies didn't leave Meredith with time for all the busy work, while Hess had jumped at the chance to get in on the groundbreaking surgeries. But, standing there listening to Hess rattle off facts about the trial, something felt off. That was Meredith's job. Meredith's trial. His throat felt dry and the room seemed to be closing in on him. Meredith's trial. This wasn't supposed to be happening today. Not when she'd spent the night before reading her mother's suicide note and experimenting with new ways to catch hypothermia. He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. "How frequent are the seizures?" he asked.

"She was admitted a little after midnight, and since then she's had five full blown, tonic-clonic seizures," said Hess. "She's also presenting with focalized numbness in her right lower extremity, which her parents say is a new development."

"Her parents?" asked Derek. He walked out of the locker room and gestured for Hess to follow. "How old is the patient?"

"Ah…" Hess glanced down at the open file. "Sarah Roche is six years old."

Derek came to an abrupt halt. "Six?"

"Yes, sir," said Hess quietly. Derek nodded, still standing motionless in the hall, disrupting the flow of traffic. He closed his eyes for a moment and let the people pass by. Something heavy settled over his shoulders. She was young. So young. "Um…" continued Hess, clearing his throat. "I had an intern take her up for a CT, but she should be back by now. Her parents would very much like to meet you, if you have time. I told them I'd let you know as soon as you arrived."

"Right," said Derek, forcing himself to focus. Children got sick and died all the time. It was just one of life's many bitter facts. He shrugged off the sorrow and nodded to his resident; he had to think like a doctor here. "Lead the way, Dr. Hess," he said.

The walk through the hospital felt treacherous. This was the part where he was supposed to stop a passing nurse and ask her to page Dr. Grey, but every time he thought to speak, Meredith would flash into his mind with all the biting brilliance of a lightening strike. Sometimes he saw her staring blankly at the wall as the water beat down around her. Sometimes she was red-eyed and sobbing, carving his heart out with the sound. And sometimes she gave him a haunting smile and fell into the bay. He wanted her, but the words never came. They stuck somewhere in the back of his throat, leaving him dry mouthed and uneasy. By the time they stood outside the patient's room he felt her absence everywhere, but Hess pushed the door open, and Derek's feet took him in without her.

The room was bright and cheerful with a parade of zoo animals marching round and round the walls, but the young man and woman standing sentry on either side of the bed looked like ghosts. They both glanced up at the sound of the door, but the little girl they guarded didn't. She was a tiny, frail thing, dwarfed by the bed and the sea of tubes feeding in and out of her, but she didn't seem to mind. Her focus was the pad of paper in her lap, her tongue sticking out a little past her teeth as she wielded a blue crayon furiously back and forth across the page.

"Mr. and Mrs. Roche," began Hess, stepping further into the room. "This is Dr. Shepherd, the neurosurgeon heading the trial."

The woman leapt up and hurried towards them. "Olivia," she stammered, sticking her hand out. Tears lurked in the corners of her eyes. "Call me Olivia, Dr. Shepherd. You'll be able to fit us in, won't you? I know we aren't scheduled until next month, and this is incredibly short notice, but Dr. Hess assured us you could do…"

"Olivia," said Derek, taking her hand and cutting her nervous stream of words short. "I'm going to do everything I possibly can for your daughter. I'm happy to move the surgery if that's what we need to do." He squeezed her hand and she smiled at that, but the tears stayed put. "And this is Sarah?" he asked, moving towards the child. Sarah looked up at him with large, arresting eyes but said nothing.

"That's Sarah," said the man seated beside her. "Mike," he added, stretching his arm out across the bed to shake Derek's hand. "Thanks for taking us on like this. We, uh…" He glanced down at Sarah, his voice catching. "We really appreciate it."

Derek nodded. "Of course," he said.

Sarah had gone back to her coloring, but Mike gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Sarah, do you want to say hello to Dr. Shepherd?" he urged his daughter. "Remember, Mommy and I told you about him. He's going to make your head all better."

Sarah sighed heavily but stopped coloring to stare up at him. "'Cause you're a surgeon?" she asked at last.

"I am," agreed Derek, sitting down on the edge of her bed.

"And you're gonna surgeon my head?"

Derek smiled. "That's right."

"Okay," she said, looking down at her paper again. Her hair was a mess of unruly curls that hid her face when she leaned forward, but she let out a little hum of concentration and resumed her furious coloring.

"What are you drawing?" asked Derek as he followed the progress of her tiny hand back and forth across the page.

Sarah stopped again and tilted her picture towards him. It was an endless, all encompassing scribble of blue. "The ocean," she said simply as if this was an obvious truth.

"Hmm…" said Derek, his voice gentle. "I know someone who likes the ocean."

"I get to go after you surgeon my head," said Sarah. "Mommy and Daddy promised. We are going to build ten sandcastles and have hotdogs and ice cream _and _popsicles. And I can stay up as late as I want! Do you get to stay up as late as you want, Dr. Shepherd?"

"Sometimes," said Derek.

"I get to at the ocean," said Sarah. She added another streak of blue to the page. "So you should hurry up and surgeon my head right away, kay?" Olivia let out a tiny, shivery gasp at that, and Derek looked up to find her turning away, swiping the back of her hand across her eyes.

"Sarah loves the beach," said Mike, speaking over the sound of his sniffling wife. "Don't you, Sarah-bear?" Sarah just nodded, still working on her picture. "We were planning on taking her there in two weeks. A special treat before she had to, before…" He stroked his daughter's hair, smoothing her messy blonde curls back into place. "Now we think after the surgery will be better," he said in a voice that sounded strong. His eyes gave the lie away. "Isn't that right, Sarah?" he asked. The little girl was silent.

"Something to look forward to," said Derek quietly as he got to his feet again. "Mike, Olivia, I need to review Sarah's CT scans, and I'm going to have a resident take her up for some lab work."

"And then the surgery?" pressed Olivia. She sounded hoarse and full of tears. "Today?"

Derek shook his head. "A lot of preparation goes into this procedure, and as Sarah's arrival was unexpected, it's going to take at least twenty-four hours before…" He glanced down at the child as he spoke and stopped abruptly. Something was off. Sarah was no longer coloring; the crayon rested limply in her hand. Her shoulder twitched once and then he knew. "Dr. Hess," said Derek, his voice changing registers. It stopped informing and simply commanded.

"Dr. Shepherd?" answered Hess.

"Locate the Phenobarbital," he said even as Sarah's whole body went rigid. A strange, grinding moan forced its way out past her clenched teeth. The sound wasn't human. It wasn't even animal. It was something alien. Harsh and heartbreaking. Olivia gasped as Sarah began to jerk and shake, her limbs flopping wildly. The blue crayon rolled off the bed and hit the floor while the ocean was lost beneath the girl.

"The Pheno, sir," said Hess.

Derek moved quickly, administering the drug with a steady confidence he'd spent years building. Phenobarbital worked fast, but he looked down at Sarah in the moment between action and relief. Her blonde hair was a mess and her skin was starting to match the sea. She shook and shook until it rattled his heart. She was so small. In the next moment, the seizure faded away, drugged into a lapse a lot like sleep. She looked peaceful, and it made his eyes sting. She was so very small.

Slowly, slowly Sarah came back to consciousness, her breathing normal again as her eyelids fluttered open. "Welcome back," he said. Sarah just blinked at him, drugged and disoriented. "You're okay," he added, his voice gentle. He glanced down at the sodden sheets and straightened up. "Hess, get a nurse in here to change the bedding," he said before turning to find Mike and Olivia. They stood huddled in the doorway, wrapped tightly in each other's arms. Derek gestured to them with a tilt of his head, stepping back to let them soothe their daughter.

"Please," said Olivia as she rushed to Sarah's side. She looked up at him with hollow gray eyes; the part of her that would die if her daughter did was already preparing to go. "Please fix this, Dr. Shepherd," she said. "Bad things shouldn't happen to children. Please, if you could just…" Her voice shook. "Please…"

Mike reached out and grabbed her hand. "He's gonna do everything he can, Liv."

Derek nodded, his sole success with treating this type of tumor suddenly feeling like nothing at all. A fluke. A miracle. A one hit wonder. "Everything I can," he agreed as Sarah stirred, reaching weakly for her mother. For all he knew, he couldn't do it again. He swallowed the lump in his throat and tried to smile at the family. "Someone will be back soon to take Sarah for her labs," he said, heading towards the door as the nurse bustled in with an armful of fresh linens. Mike and Olivia only nodded, their eyes on their child.

"The CT scans, sir," said Hess, accosting him with a manila envelope the second he made it into the hall. Derek grunted his acknowledgement and led the way to a nearby room. His footsteps echoed too loudly inside his head. Sarah was small and beautiful as a doll. He pinned the scans to the backlight and flicked the switch, illuminating her brain. Sarah loved the ocean and colored it blue. He stared at the size of the glioma eating up her parietal lobe, and the force of the image hit him like a truck. Beth's had been smaller when they'd beaten it, less advanced. The odds were stacked differently this time, and he didn't know if he could do it again. If he could save her. If it wasn't already too late. Sarah was dying in a matter of days.

Derek slammed his hand against the backlight, rattling the glass. "Damn it," he muttered. The glioma taunted him and he turned off the light, hiding it in darkness.

"Dr. Shepherd?" asked Hess. "Is everything alright?"

"This shouldn't have happened to her," he said, his voice hoarse. He felt rubbed raw within. "She's only five."

There was a pause, and then, "…Six."

Derek looked up. "What?"

"Sarah is six, sir," said Hess quietly.

"Right. Six," agreed Derek, shaking his head. "She's six." He yanked the scans down and passed them back to Hess. "Get her started on her labs. I want a full work up. Page me when the results are in." He felt frayed around the edges and walked out of the room without waiting for a reply. The hallway was cold and uncaring, and he longed for Meredith. She was the one who overflowed with enthusiasm for the trial. She was the one who gave him hope when he had to cut into the brain of a dying child with nothing more than a single success under his belt. He wanted to page her, and yet he couldn't. Doubts kept his hands still and the pagers silent. Every step was harder to take than the one before it.

The journey to his office seemed to take a lifetime, but once inside, he quickly slammed the door. In the silent emptiness of the lonely room, all his fears came flooding back. Derek began to pace just to have something to do with his body; inaction felt suddenly criminal. On the fourth lap past his desk, he caught sight of the clinical trial forms requiring his signature. They waited for him right beside the computer. He groaned and sank down into his chair, pulling them towards him. He didn't have time to pace. There was a viral cocktail to prepare. A six year old to save. A girlfriend busy unraveling at the seams.

He signed the first form and promptly dropped the pen. Even the motion of his wrist across the page felt like some sort of grim betrayal. This was her trial, but all he wanted to do was send her home. Keep her safe.

Derek turned from the forms to the picture of her he kept on his desk, staring at it intently as if it could tell him what to do. It was old. Well, somewhat old. It was hard to have an old with Meredith when the time he'd known her was just this tiny sliver of his life, even when sometimes it felt endless and like it was all he'd ever known. But it was from the old them, back when the memory of New York was still too fresh and the only thing that took it away was her. They'd been riding the ferryboat back to his land, and she'd looked so beautiful with her hair blowing all around her caught up in the wind, her eyes bright with this unbridled joy he hadn't felt since… Since ever, really. It came with her. She'd taken his breath away, and he'd wanted instantly to capture the moment forever. The smile in the picture was teasing and amused, she'd been humoring him while he'd fiddled with his phone and chose the angle and finally captured her there against the bright blue of the sky, a smidge of the water just visible over her shoulder. And then she'd scooted close to him again and gone back to watching the waves, dangling far over the railing in a way that hadn't bothered him then, but would have him fighting the urge to pull her back if she tried something like that now.

He remembered that day so clearly. He had to. It had led to that night in the water by his dock. He almost wished he didn't remember. If it had never happened, the day she drowned could've been some freak accident for all he knew. And her mood this morning could just be a bad one, something to worry about and puzzle over, but not the sort of thing that made him feel physically ill and drenched in dread. But Derek remembered; Meredith could swim like a fish. She loved the ocean and colored it blue. He sank back in his chair, staring at the picture. It had been warm that day. A perfect day for fishing, and he was going to take her. He closed his eyes and saw her smile.

* * * * *

"So," said Meredith, letting the word stretch out until it felt as lazy as the day. Derek glanced at her out of the corner of his eye and smiled. He'd been longing to take her here; the small private dock that came with his land had been one of the biggest selling points for him. They sat side by side, the waves leaping out infinitely blue before them. She had pulled off her shoes and rolled up her jeans the moment they'd got there and was dipping her toes in and out of the water, creating countless little splashes that he was sure had to be scaring all the fish away.

Derek raised his beer, taking a long swallow. "So," he echoed. She just smiled, staring down at the perfect, glassy water. It glittered like jewels under the late afternoon sun. "You're bored," he said when she didn't answer. He wanted her to like fishing, and he'd done his very best to keep her entertained, explaining the purpose of the rod and the reel and going over a wide variety of fishing knots. The improved clinch knot. The arbor knot. The bimini twist. He thought, as a surgeon, she might at least find those interesting. She'd seemed happy to listen too, even if she did have a hint of a smirk playing around the corners of her mouth most of the time.

Meredith shrugged. "I'm not bored," she said. She looked up from the water and stretched her arms high overhead before collapsing onto her back with a sigh. She'd stripped off her jacket well over an hour ago, and her shirt was riding high, revealing a thin strip of skin he longed to touch. "I'm not," she repeated gently when she caught him staring. "I'm happy, Derek." Her voice was quiet and truthful, and it reeled him in. Everything was blue. The water, the sky, even her eyes seemed more blue than green today. Derek leaned closer, happy to lose himself in the deep, dizzying blur of blue. Meredith met his gaze, laying flat on her back and staring up at him, soft and languid beneath the beating sun.

Silence held them close and immobile even as something seemed to change. Meredith blinked once, twice, and then it rolled in. There was a sudden, staggering openness to the way she stared at him. He felt it like a fishhook caught deep in his gut, yanking him towards her. It was undeniable; they were looking at each other like it meant something. Something more than I like you. Something more than lust and want and desire. Her fingers feathered over his cheek, and they stared. What he saw was treacherous and exhilarating. It made the ground roll like the waves. He could fall in love with her. She could fall in love with him.

But Meredith blinked again and it was gone. The openness that had invited him in vanished as quickly as a dream. Derek felt disjointed as he watched her roll away and sit up. He shook his head to clear it. He'd been imagining things.

"It's just I've been wondering," said Meredith, tucking her knees to her chest. "What's the point of this?"

Derek raised his eyebrows, twisting to look straight at her. "This?" he croaked. Them? She'd felt that too?

"Fishing," she said as she flung a hand out towards the water. "Why do you like it? You haven't even caught anything."

"Oh. It's relaxing," he said with a shrug. "You could use some relaxing."

Meredith frowned, looking miffed. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"How long was your shift again?"

"Thirty-six hours," she said.

"Exactly." Derek grinned at her. "You need relaxing."

"Hmm…maybe," said Meredith, returning his grin with one of her own. She bit her lip, and he stared unabashedly. He wondered if she'd get that look back if he kissed her. That incredible openness that sent him freefalling. "I think you just wanted an excuse to show off your rod," she teased, and when he glanced up again, the look in her eyes was one he knew well. Lust and want and desire. This was how they stared. "Your fishing rod, I mean," she said lightly.

Derek chuckled and let himself leer. "What, Mer? You wanna hold my rod?" He loomed over her, following her down to the dock. "All you had to do was ask," he said, his voice low.

Meredith rolled her eyes but arched up against him, kissing him hard in the same breath. His fishing rod clattered forgotten to the dock, and he pushed her shirt up, sliding his palm over warm skin. She was everything soft and good. The way she wound her legs around him to pull him close, their bodies rough and fumbling from all the clothes, built up friction that made him groan and her pant. She watched him with heavy lidded eyes gone dark with lust, and Derek found himself missing that strange, wide-eyed vulnerability he'd glimpsed before. It should be there for this, painting the future with possibility. He could fall in love with her. He stroked her cheek, trying to draw it out.

"Meredith," he said. He liked the way her name felt on his lips. He said it again and kissed her softly. His hands traced her face as if committing her to memory through his fingertips. She had gone still beneath him, but he looked at her wonderingly, brushing the hair out of her eyes with a sweep of his hand.

Meredith giggled, her laughter quiet and unsure. Just a nervous fluttering against her throat. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"Trying to make love to you," he murmured, his mouth finding her throat and kissing all the way up the smooth column of skin. He checked her eyes again for that openness he craved, but it wasn't there. If anything, she seemed further away.

"Oh…" The word was barely more than a puff of air, and her hand pressed against his chest in a way that came dangerously close to pushing him off her.

"What's wrong?" asked Derek, trying to mask the hurt in his voice.

She flashed him an abrupt smile, widening her eyes too much. "Nothing's wrong," she said quickly. She slung an arm around his neck to pull him back.

"Something's wrong," said Derek, resisting the weight of her arm. She bit her lip and looked away. "What?" he pressed.

Meredith shrugged, scrunching her face up in an awkward grimace. Derek just waited.

"Characters in trashy romance novels," she blurted out, her cheeks tinged pink. "You know, the ones you find on a big plastic rack in a gas station off a freeway. They make love. But real people? Come on, Derek…" She trailed off with a sigh, and the sound was a breath away from sad.

He rolled onto his side, lying next to her on the dock. They were both silent, and the Grand Canyon suddenly seemed to span the foot between them. Her lips twitched so much he couldn't tell if it was meant as a smile or a frown.

"You have a better way of putting it?" he asked at last.

"You want to fuck your intern?" she said with a nonchalance he would've found sexy at any other moment.

Instead he shook his head, feeling lost and frustrated. "You don't think that's a little crass?"

"You do?"

And then they were just staring at each other again. It was wide eyed and uncertain, cautious at best. The space between them was still its own entity.

"Sex is just sex, Derek," she continued quietly, her teeth worrying at her lower lip. "Be factual. We're doctors. We like facts, right?" Her voice shook a little, and she ducked her head.

He rolled onto his back, staring up at the sky. It was so blue. "So, just to be clear, this is just sex to you? That's all that we've been doing?"

"No," she said at once and promptly looked embarrassed. "No. I don't…" She sat up again, twisting her hands together. "It's just, what is…" She trailed off, leaving her question incomplete. He stared at her, not knowing how to answer. What is _this? _They hadn't defined it yet, but it was possibility. Great, swelling, overpowering possibility. He could love her. She had to feel it too. Meredith cleared her throat, hopping suddenly to her feet. "Beer," she stated. "We need more, so, um… I'm gonna go and get more. Beer, that is. From the trailer." She pointed back the way they'd came, her cheeks flushed dangerously pink, and took off at a walk that bordered on a run.

Derek groaned and watched her go, his body keenly feeling all the disappointment that came with wanting her but not having her. He wanted to be angry but he just felt confused. He lay there thinking about Meredith and Addison, all of the ways they were different and none of the ways they were the same. He thought about it until he felt dangerously close to a liar and had to stop. She was taking a long time. It was a decent hike to the trailer and back, but still, she was taking a long time.

The sun was starting to set when he finally heard her footsteps and turned to see her coming back to him down the length of the dock. She'd forgotten the beer she'd run off for, but they both knew that wasn't why she'd really gone. The way she was walking now though, it lacked the nervousness that had marked her steps when she'd hurried away from him. Her hips swished as she walked and he let himself stare. Meredith smiled at him and his first impulse was to smile back, but he held off and frowned a little.

She stopped beside him but didn't sit down. "Couldn't find the beer," she said, flipping over her empty hands and holding them palm out. "Have you caught any fish yet?"

Derek shook his head. "Not yet." The fishing rod lay abandoned on the dock.

"Still?" Her eyebrows arched and her smile turned into something that was a little too dark to be sweet. "You really have a thing for delayed gratification, huh?"

He had gone back to staring at the water, but his head jerked up at that. "What?"

Apparently they weren't going to talk about anything at all because Meredith just shrugged and peeled off her top. Her bra was black, and he lost himself in the contrast between her breasts and the fabric that gripped them.

"What are you doing?" he finally managed to ask. Desire was still coiled tight from before, and he felt himself start to harden as she reached behind her back and unclasped her bra.

"Indian summer," said Meredith lightly. She undid the button on her jeans, moving her hips in this entrancing little shimmy to get them off. "You don't waste nights like these." She hooked her thumbs under her panties and bent in half as she slid them all the way down her legs. Her nose touched her knees, and Derek swallowed hard. It still thrilled him to see how flexible she was. He could push her legs wherever he wanted, and they would just…go there. Meredith straightened up as if that was nothing and smiled at him.

"Mer…" Derek reached out, smoothing his hand up the back of her leg as high as he could go. He wanted to reach that little dip in her lower back right above her ass. Meredith gave a shake of her head and sidestepped him, moving out of reach.

"Delayed gratification, remember?" she teased. "Like all that fishing you've been doing. Stay here. I want to try something." Without waiting for him to reply, she left him on the dock again. A rock jutted out just to the right of them, shielding the dock, and the land sloped easily enough up to meet it. She walked to the very edge of the ledge, where ground gave way to air several feet above the water, and he could only stare. Her skin was rosy and radiant, burnished by the setting sun.

Meredith bounced on the balls of her feet once, twice light as a feather and then bent her knees deeply, swinging her arms with the motion. Her body curved like a crescent moon as she left the ledge and jackknifed in the air. In the blink of an eye, she was a straight line again, slicing past the surface of the water and disappearing with an effortless grace that made his breath catch. Like she was some sort of…swan. Derek leaned forward, shaking off disbelief. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

He looked out over the water, hungry for the sight of her. When she resurfaced, she was a good ways out from the shore, but she simply turned over, swimming back to him with lazy strokes.

"Hey," said Meredith when she reached the dock. She beamed up at him, treading water to stay afloat.

"Hey," said Derek, smiling back. "That was fancy."

Meredith just wrinkled her nose. "Would've been a lot better with a diving board."

"Hmmm…" said Derek, thinking back to the elegant precision with which she'd entered the water. He had a hard time imagining anything much better than that. "You dive?" he asked curiously. There had been a practiced ease to it that seemed to speak of much more than summers simply spent at a beach.

"Um…" Meredith ducked underwater for a moment and resurfaced, smoothing her hair back from her face. "Used to. A little…when I was a kid. Extracurricular activities were a strict requirement when I was growing up, and there was a pool near us, so I spent a lot of time there," she said. She sounded apologetic, as if she needed to explain away what she could do.

"So you learned how to dive," said Derek. He found the idea fascinating. "In college too?"

Meredith snorted. "No. Definitely not. I'd moved on to, uh…different extracurricular activities by then."

"Oh? Like what?" He leaned forward, suddenly wanting to know everything about her. Every little thing she'd ever done. Every last detail that had shaped her into who she was.

"Look, I'm naked here," said Meredith, her tone of voice clearly indicating that she was changing the subject. She pushed out to float on her back, and the water that had hid her body from view became completely translucent. Derek raked his gaze slowly down her skin inch by inch; the heaviness he still harbored deep in his heart damn near disappeared whenever he looked at her. "Now are you gonna come swim with me, or do you want to keep trying to catch fish?" she asked.

He tried to smile in a way that didn't scream the things she did to him so loud and clear. "Well I can't fish now," he said, forcing himself to slowly, casually begin reeling in his line. "You've scared them all away."

Meredith grinned at him and he felt giddy. "Yeah. I did that on purpose. To save your ego."

"My ego is just fine," he said as he set his rod to the side and unbuttoned his shirt.

She hummed softly as if considering the possibility, her eyes sparking at him. "Whatever you say."

She pushed away from the dock, and he stripped off the rest of his clothes as he watched her swim. The setting sun painted the water red, and the vast emptiness of it dwarfed her, but she looked fearless. Something strange stirred in his heart at the sight of her. He thought again that he could love her.

She had vanished from view by the time he got in, and Derek swam out a bit from the dock, searching for her. "Meredith?" he called.

As if in response, the water stirred beneath him, slender fingers grabbing at his toes. She popped up in front of him, grinning wickedly.

"Oh, so we're playing dirty, huh?" said Derek. Meredith just flipped onto her back and kicked, splashing water in his face. He caught a flailing ankle and yanked her towards him. "You're going down now," he said, teasing his fingers up and down her sides. She thrashed wildly in his grasp, shrieking her laughter to the night sky, and he had to fight to keep a hold of her. Finally, he sought for the bottom with his toes and found it, his feet settling into the muck and giving him the leverage he needed to lift her out of the water.

"You can stand?" cried Meredith, twisting around in his arms as she found herself suddenly airborne. "Not fair. Not even remotely fair." Derek pressed his lips to the tip of her nose before kissing her firmly on the mouth.

"Hey, not my fault you're a shrimp."

"But it's cheating," she protested, still squirming in his arms. "And I am not a shrimp!"

"How is this cheating? I wasn't aware that the water had rules."

"Oh, it has plenty. You just don't understand them," she taunted, dropping her voice to something slightly lower and more seductive. He had her pinned, but she craned her head back and kissed her way up his neck, scraping with her teeth. A sudden waterfall of sensation poured out from where she licked and sucked and teased. His grip loosened a little, and she was gone.

He groaned and reached out for her. "Who's cheating now?"

Meredith only shrugged and began to swim away from him. It was a lazy backstroke that had him hypnotized by the way it moved her breasts. She smiled when he caught up with her. "I was going to let you win the race because you didn't catch any fish," she said. "But that's so not happening now. I'm kicking your ass." And then she rolled over onto her stomach and really began to swim. He followed after her. Always chasing.

She was faster at first, but he was stronger; she won the first lap, but he had her beat by the second. They stopped not far from the dock, both more than a little bit breathless. Derek let his feet find the bottom again, and Meredith twined her arms around his neck. He could feel her legs kicking lazily on either side of him.

"That was fun," she murmured, pressing her forehead against his. Her chest rose and fell with each breath. She was dripping wet and glowing like the night sky.

"Mmm…" Derek captured her lips with his. "You really do like the water," he observed.

"Yes," she said quietly.

"Maybe I should get a diving board."

She pulled back a little, quirking an eyebrow at him. "What?"

"You know…a board. For diving off of."

"I know what a diving board is. Why would you possibly want one?"

"So you can show off," he said, remembering how beautiful she'd looked before she hit the water. Like she was flying. And she'd been downright giddy when she resurfaced; he wanted to keep her in a perpetual state of joy. "So long as you're naked," he added with a smirk. "Only naked diving is allowed off my board."

She laughed out loud and the sound was beautiful. "Derek…while I'd love it, summer's ending. It's only going to get colder. Tonight's a total fluke."

He shrugged. "It'll get warm again."

"What?"

"That's how seasons work, Meredith. They go from hot to cold and back again."

"I know that," she said, rolling her eyes. "It's just…next summer's a long way off." He heard the questions hidden beneath her words when she didn't quite meet his gaze. A lot could change in ten months.

Derek shrugged. "I like diving boards," he said simply and she smiled at him as if she understood. All he knew was that in ten months he'd still want her in his arms. He wanted more of her. He always wanted more. This was how he felt alive.

Meredith brushed the curls back from his forehead. She wrapped one around her finger, toying with it.

"Derek?" Her voice was soft and questioning, and he didn't quite trust what he saw, but there was a glimmer there in her eyes of that openness he'd seen before.

"Yes?"

She pressed down against his shoulder, raising her body out of the water enough to meet his mouth. Her kiss was soft and gentle as her voice, and he slid an arm around her waist, holding her close. When she pulled away, that openness was still scrawled across her face. Her hands slid underwater, raking over his chest, his stomach, his thighs. She wrapped her fingers around him and his breath hissed past his teeth. Derek leaned into her, living in the heady, hungry world she created with her touch.

"I want to…" she said, sounding suddenly uncertain. Her hands stilled, and he choked back his protest. She shouldn't stop. She should never stop. But Meredith just hummed under her breath, looking over his shoulder towards the endless expanse of black water. There was no daylight left. "I mean, I think we should, uh, that we should maybe…" She stammered towards nothing only to trail off again, looking frustrated with herself. Before he could figure out what to say or what was going on, she launched herself at his lips, kissing him with none of her previous softness. Her mouth was warm and demanding, and he let her in.

When Meredith pulled back a second time, she sought out his eyes with her own before flitting away again just as quickly. She glanced at him and away, at him and away until he was close to frustrated and aching for her hands.

"Mer?" he asked.

She licked her lips and met his eyes with all the confidence of a frightened animal. He listened to the waves lapping against the dock and the heavy way she breathed. She placed her hands against his shoulders; the gesture was a question. "We should…" she whispered tentatively, and then he knew. This was her concession. Her apology. Her gift. Derek didn't know what to call it, but he said he didn't want to just fuck his intern anymore, and so she offered him another piece of herself.

"We should," he agreed and kissed her back.

Her mouth was soft and familiar as he slid his tongue against hers, but she touched his shoulder like he was a stranger. More of a stranger than he'd been the night she didn't know his name. Then she'd been demanding, putting his hands exactly where she wanted them, showing him just how to make her come hard enough she'd scream. Now every touch was fleeting and feather light. Her smile was shy when they kissed again, and her hands fumbled against his skin. He didn't want to fuck his intern anymore, and he'd never seen her so uncertain.

He let his lips slide away from hers, brushing over the soft skin of her cheek until he reached her ear. He breathed against her and watched the shivers run down her spine. He was tightly wound and aching, but she was so hesitant. So unlike herself. He caught her earlobe with his teeth and tugged. "Look at me," he said, his whisper sounding rough against the silken way she moaned, all melted butter and golden light. "Look at me."

Slowly, Meredith pulled back enough for him to see her face. She met his gaze through a flutter of eyelashes, looking small and shy and exquisite. Moonlight threw her into stark relief against the vague and shadowed night. Beads of water lay like jewels, illuminated against her skin. She rippled through his mind and left him wanting. Lust felt like religion and desire a science.

"Don't close your eyes," he ordered as he traced the curve of her ass, smoothing his palm down and around, following her body to its center. He stroked her folds with a single finger, opening her to him. She was slick and wet as the water that cradled them. The feel of her brought back a sharp, aching hunger that started in his gut and burned its way out until even his skin felt molten. He wanted to pull his hand away and thrust up into her. To lose himself in slick, wet heat. Again and again and again. But Derek kept his hand in place, pulling little, breathy moans from her with feathered, teasing strokes. He kissed her throat and found her clit, drawing circles that made her sigh. "You're beautiful," he murmured, telling her shoulder and her spine.

"Oh…" Meredith said the word like it was a question. Like it might be up for debate. She was panting, her nails scrabbling against his skin like all the world was sliding away. She bowed her head again, and he mourned the loss of her eyes.

"Beautiful," he said again. Beautiful and entirely his. She had to realize how much he wanted her with her eyes wide open and her secrets exposed. He snaked one hand through her hair as she ground against the other, clutching him with her thighs. The strands were heavy and waterlogged, lying limp against her back. "Look at me, Meredith," he said quietly, grabbing a fistful and pulling. Desire thrilled its way through him like an electric shock when her head jerked back and their eyes locked. She went where he wanted with a ragged gasp, floating in front of him, her breathing labored and full of senseless, whimpered sounds. He watched her pupils dilate to his touch. Her eyes were black and green and gray. Liquid colors beckoned him. He could lose himself in there.

Meredith clung to him, trapping him against her body, hard against her soft skin. He groaned as he worked her into a desperate, panting mess, and this time she didn't look away. She stared back, daring him, begging him, needing him. He was the freaking king of the entire world as he brought her closer. He could see it in the way her eyes glazed. Could feel it in the way she gripped his fingers, clenching, trembling. Close. She writhed against him, sweeping away coherency like it was little more than dust. So close. The stars spun in the night sky. He wanted to push up into her, ramming home to finish fast. Right with her. Derek fought desire until it felt like his skin was peeling away. He was rubbed raw and starving when he brought her to the brink and watched her fall. Her voice was a shiver of sound, a thin whine that grew and grew, swelling until it seemed to scrape the sky.

Desire was a growl born low in his throat, and he wanted her with an intensity that was ravenous and overwhelming. She would be all his. Always. He could love this woman. He already might. Already. Always. Her hips were smooth under his hands and he gripped her flesh, pushing up as she came down. He slid up, up further. In. He was lost in a wash of pleasure. He could love her. He already did. Two lines blurred into a single reality: Meredith. His.

He dipped his tongue into the hollow of her throat and kissed her again, slipping up, up, up her skin until he was plunging his tongue deep into her mouth. She twined her arms and legs around him like he was a tree she wanted to climb, and Derek leaned back, hoisting her higher as he drank her down.

He rocked into her as the water rocked them until it wasn't enough. The urge to forgo restraint and hammer into her had him with all the lure of a black hole. He needed to loom over her, push her down and take her, take her, take her while strange new things unfolded behind her eyes. The dock was a promise, and he moved her towards it. Her hands were everywhere, petting and caressing. She was lovely. She was his. He had to get there. Had to have her on the dock, spread out beneath him like a feast. All his. When he pulled out, his mind howled at the loss of her.

Meredith blinked at him in glassy-eyed confusion. "What…?" she gasped. "Don't. Don't stop."

"Dock," he grunted. Eloquence was overrated. He missed her warmth. He needed to be inside again. Again, again.

"What?" She didn't understand.

"Trust me," he said, and he slid his hands under her armpits and lifted. For a moment, she was overhead, displacing the sky. He looked up, and water rained down on him from her skin. Her eyes were wide and unafraid. Trust him. She already did.

She hit the dock and tumbled backwards. Derek hoisted himself up after her. He hoped he hadn't hurt her. He should've been more careful, but she didn't seem to care. She looked fine. Better than fine. Better, better. She lay back on the dock, reaching out with a hand as her legs fell open. Inviting him in.

"Here?" she asked. The dock was rough against his skin after the water, but he scrambled towards her, barely caring. Here. He pushed in again without preamble, ramming in to the hilt. Meredith grunted and grabbed his hand. Their fingers locked. Every muscle was taut and tormented. He was rock hard and filled with the chaos of a splintered mind screaming go, but Derek sought out her eyes and forced himself to hold still. To wait. He'd thrown her onto the dock. He should've been gentler. A gentleman. Addison flashed into his mind and his insides curdled. He wasn't a fucking gentleman anymore. He clamped down on the thought and shoved it far, far away. Meredith was his. He could love… _Did_ love. He feathered kisses all over her face. Gently. He didn't want to hurt her.

He touched her cheek. "Are you okay?"

"I'm good." She breathed the words against his skin and her heels dug into his back. "Go."

And so he did. He lost himself in a new, faster rhythm, wild and unrestrained as he pumped into her again and again. She was slick and wet inside and out; water sluiced from her skin to puddle on the dock. One hand stayed locked with hers, an anchor while the other one roamed over every inch of her, to tug on her nipples and coax new sounds from her parted lips. Meredith undulated beneath him, arcing up to meet him again and again. Rise and fall. Rise and fall. Like the tide. Her eyes were truthful in a way he'd never seen before. She was sinuous and sublime, and she chanted his name. Here were all the layers to the green of her eyes. All the truths she'd so carefully hid. He could have her if he wanted. Love her if he wanted. Whatever he wanted, she would give it. That was the secret he finally saw laid bare across her face, and it was delirium. A blissful madness that made him go, go, go. The tiny hand caught in his was the one pinprick of sanity still afforded him. He had to love her; there could be no choice. She was the only sane thing left amongst the feeling.

He still had her hand when she came. When her eyes glazed over and she moaned, quieter than usual. Delicate and fluttering, her whole body alive with tiny shivers. She clenched around him again and again until it pulled him under too. He surrendered with a groan, a senseless shout. The world was in freefall. She was beautiful, and he was lost. He loved her; there was no choice.

*****

Derek raked his hand back through his hair as the memory faded and the clinical trial paperwork slid into focus again. He never did get her that diving board. Addison had shown up, and he'd had to watch as all the trust and all the adoration bled from Meredith's eyes. He scrawled his signature across the line marked for the treating physician and tried not to hate himself for that. Her eyes had changed. He had been back to the dock since then, but never with her. Only to fish, never to swim. The next time Derek had held her in the water, she'd been a breath away from dead. He didn't want to know how his own eyes had changed after that.

He signed the next three forms in quick succession, feeling nauseas. She could swim like a fish, and she hadn't. She could swim, and an ugly voice inside his head said it could happen again. Maybe not in the water. Maybe some other way. But he knew the things her mother did to her mind, and it scared him. He wasn't supposed to know what it was like to hold her corpse.

Derek turned to his computer, trying to force it all from his mind and prepare. He opened the file that held the data from the first round of the trial. Did he want to tweak the viral cocktail? Did he even have time? Sarah's next seizure could easily be her last. He stared at the screen until the numbers blurred, finding no solace there. It would be a long night. He hadn't even solved the problem of paging Meredith or letting the case slip by without her notice. His gut twisted with something that felt like guilt, but he shoved it away. It was just one case; she shouldn't even be at work today. It couldn't hurt, and if Sarah died… Meredith shouldn't have to see the child die. What if that was enough to do it? That fucking proverbial straw that broke the camel's back and left her for dead. It could happen again. Derek slammed his hand down against the desk and stared blindly at the picture of his lover's face. What was the measure of enough? He had to find it before she did.

He gathered up the paperwork and left his office. Meredith flashed into his mind with the rhythm of his footsteps. He saw her diving into the water like a swan. He saw her dead. He saw her senseless in the shower. In the tub. Dead. All of this had happened before. Derek felt lost inside a screaming, hideous pattern. All of it was happening again. He was a shell of himself when he reached the nurses' station, collapsing under the weight of slick, nauseating fear.

"Here," he muttered, thrusting the forms at the first nurse he saw. He forgot to smile and forgot to say her name. Or thank you. Or anything else that marked him as the sort of civilized, polite person he generally took pride in being. He forgot to care too.

"What's this?" she asked with a glance down at the papers.

"Clinical trial paperwork," said Derek. He wondered if his voice sounded as hollow to her as it did inside his head. "There's a new admittant." He shrugged. "It needed my signature."

She nodded and hurried off with the papers. Derek was about to turn away when he heard someone to the right of him clear their throat pointedly. He glanced down to find Bailey at his elbow, her arms folded over her chest.

"Clinical trial paperwork?" she echoed.

"Um…" Derek blinked, filling up quickly with an inexplicable dread. "Yes."

"I was under the impression that wasn't starting for a few weeks," said Bailey.

"It wasn't. One of the candidates has been worsening drastically though, so…" He shrugged again. Everything felt heavy. "It's been pushed up."

Bailey nodded, her brows drawing down in a frown. "Well, I had her prepping my bowl resection, but one of her interns should be able to handle that."

"What?"

"Grey," said Bailey. She rolled her eyes. "The Chief has made it very clear to me that she is grandfathered into the trial under the old rules."

"Oh…that," said Derek weakly.

Bailey made a soft, scuffing sound, full of disapproval, clearly misinterpreting his response. "Yes, that." She scowled up at him. "You'd think the man would be a little less keen on the old rules since he cites them as the reason for everything wrong around here. The number twelve ranking. Dr. Burke leaving. I'm sure he even blames the flood damage on the old rules! But, apparently _you_ refuse to get on with the business of making medical history without her by your side, so…Grey's all yours. Let her know I okayed it," said Bailey, turning to walk away.

"Wait," said Derek, feeling as if the ground was crumbling out from beneath his feet. Bailey looked back at him, and he was caught in the crossfire. The words slipped out before he could stop them. "She can stay on the bowel resection." Or go home. She shouldn't even be here today. His breathing was ragged, and he tried to smile like it was normal.

"What's this nonsense?" asked Bailey. "After all the times you've requested that girl, I take time out of _my_ busy day to do you a favor, and suddenly you don't want her?" Her eyes narrowed skeptically. "Is this some lovers' spat?"

"No," said Derek. He shook his head, his eyes suddenly stinging with the threat of tears. "It's not that." His voice was rough and wounded. Bailey just looked at him, her head cocked slightly as if to say go on. Elaborate. He swallowed hard and tried to breathe. His fear had him like the jaws of a garbage truck, crushing the air out of his lungs in one long, wheezy note. "I don't…" He scrubbed his hands up over his face and back through his hair. "I don't know what to do," he admitted.

"I'm to understand there's a problem here?" asked Bailey. Derek gave a weak nod but stayed silent. Bailey exhaled loudly, her hands finding her hips. "With Grey?" she pressed, using a tone that made him feel like a scolded child.

He stared down at the ground only to find the tile held no comfort for him. He tried the ceiling and found nothing there either. When he risked Bailey's eyes, they were softer than he'd expected and he managed a tense little jerk of his head. "Yes," he said quietly, trying not to notice how much the word felt like a betrayal.

"Okay," said Bailey, frowning at him. She paused, but Derek stayed silent. "Care to elaborate? There's a problem with one of my residents that I need to know about?"

"No, it's not…. I don't know." He hesitated. There were no rules for this. He didn't know what to say.

Bailey shifted her weight from foot to foot. He could feel her growing impatience. "If you have a problem with your little girlfriend, the two of you need to work it out yourselves. If you want me to know something about one of my residents, you've got about thirty seconds here."

Derek moaned, casting a nervous glance around the nurses' station. "Miranda, it's complicated."

She snorted. "It's _always _complicated with you and your women."

"Woman," he corrected automatically. "There's only one."

"These days," said Bailey. Her eyes narrowed. "That what this is about? You been sniffing someone new in the elevator?"

"What?" Derek shook his head, feeling alarmed. "Meredith's the only one I've been," he wrinkled his brow, "…sniffing." He took a deep breath. Bailey was about to walk away, and he'd be left just as lost as he'd been all morning. He looked down at the ground, steeling himself to speak. "She shouldn't be here," he said at last. "She shouldn't be working today."

"Right. I don't have time to play twenty questions with you," said Bailey. Her voice was brisk and businesslike, but there was a hint of something kind in her eyes. "Care to tell me what's really going on?" Derek shook his head, staring down at the ground. He didn't know what to say other than she shouldn't be working. She should be home and safe. She shouldn't have to worry about anyone else's life. Not today. "I've seen Grey," said Bailey when he stayed silent. "She seems okay."

"Yeah." Derek laughed bitterly. "She's good at that." He jerked his head up to look at her and the words came spewing out, tasting foul to his tongue. "She seemed okay the day she drowned too and look how that ended."

A strange, dark look passed across Bailey's face. "This is about Meredith drowning?"

"It's…" The sound of her first name weakened his resistance, and Derek gave an anguished nod, pushing a hand back through his hair. "The morning before she drowned, I knew she wasn't okay, but I let her go to work anyway."

Bailey was silent and watchful, and he was afraid to meet her eyes. When he finally did, she just nodded, and everything else came tumbling out.

"Only that morning doesn't hold a candle to last night," he said in a disbelieving rush. "I was scared, Miranda. I was actually scared out of my mind. She was so…" Derek exhaled loudly, throwing his hands up in there. "And now I don't know," he said with a pitiful laugh. "I'm supposed to pretend not to notice. That's my job apparently. It's what she likes, pretending everything's okay. Only the last time I did that, I almost lost her." His voice trembled a little, and his vision blurred with unspilt tears. "I can't make that mistake again. It'd be unforgivable."

He fell silent, looking at Bailey as the full force of what he was admitting hit him hard. Her eyes were solemn and unreadable.

"Now, I don't…" he started to stammer. He turned away. "I should get going."

"Come with me," said Bailey.

"What?" Derek glanced down to find her hand on his elbow. "That's not really necessary," he said, but she ignored him, simply leading him away from the nurses' station and down the hall. "Dr. Bailey," he protested, a little louder this time, but before he could say anything else, she'd hedged him into a conference room and was shutting the door behind them. She let go of his elbow and he turned to face her. "What is this?" he asked, his voice heavy with impatience.

"There's a lot of big ears out there," said Bailey. "You want to start questioning your girlfriend's mental health, your girlfriend who works in this _very _hospital, do your relationship a favor and don't broadcast your doubts to the entire nurses' station."

Derek gave a defensive shake of his head. "I wasn't questioning her mental health," he said.

"You were." Bailey crossed her arms over her chest. "You think that girl drowned herself."

"I…" Derek dropped into a chair, feeling a weight far greater than his own body push him down. "She says she was knocked in, and I believe her. I do, but I've seen her swim, and she's… She practically grew up in a pool. She shouldn't have had any trouble making it to the dock, but she didn't even try." He shrugged, staring bleakly down at the checkered blues and browns of the conference room carpeting. "She just gave up."

There was a sudden squeak, and Derek looked up to see Bailey taking the seat across from him. She nodded, encouraging him to continue. If she was shocked, she hid it well.

"It's her mother," he said, finding an unexpected relief in saying these things out loud. It gave the fear somewhere else to bounce around other than inside his head. "Her mother did things, said things. Things I can't talk about. Meredith wouldn't want me to say…"

"I wouldn't ask you to," interrupted Bailey gently.

Derek nodded, taking a deep breath. "I think she thinks she's worthless. Sometimes. When she gets like this, and I don't… I don't know how to help her."

Bailey frowned and leaned forward, her hands clasped tightly together. "Do you think she's an actual danger to herself?" she asked, her voice cautious.

"No… I don't know." He started counting the checks on the carpet. There were thirteen between his right foot and his left. He moved his toes over a little. Fourteen. Fifteen. "I just think she shouldn't be running around being a doctor right now," he muttered, still counting the squares. "She should maybe…" He moved his toes again. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. He took a deep breath and blurted it out, "She should maybe talk to one herself." He chanced an uncertain glance at Bailey only to find her nodding, her expression intent. Derek rocked back in his chair. "I can't do anything about it though," he said with an unhappy shrug.

"You're here boss," said Bailey. "You know as well as I do that there are forms you can fill out, ways to request a psych consult if you really think she's a danger to her patients."

"She'd never hurt a patient," said Derek instantly. "Never," he repeated, anger flickering through his veins like hot little flames. But he hadn't put her on the trial, hadn't trusted her with that, and the anger burnt out far too fast. The room was perfectly still, but he felt like it was reeling. "And I couldn't," he said quietly. "I'd be taking everything she finally trusted me with and throwing it right back in her face. That's all she'd see."

Bailey stayed silent, watching him. He tried to smile but it fell apart, and he buried his face in his hands instead, laughing bitterly.

"You know, normally I don't have any trouble being her boss and her boyfriend. Normally, I'm proud of how good we are at having two different relationships at the same time, but…not with this. I can't be both for this." He drew in a shuddering breath and straightened up, bleary eyed and brokenhearted. "She's made that very clear," he said quietly. "I get to sit back and wait."

Bailey just shook her head, holding out a hand. "Maybe you can't be her boss with something this personal, but you can be her boyfriend. Don't sit back and wait. Be with her. Help her."

"Meredith doesn't want any help," said Derek.

"Does she know how frightened you are?"

"What?"

"Does she understand? Have you talked to her about how much this is worrying you?"

"No, ah…I don't want to bother her," muttered Derek, looking down at the ground. "She has enough to deal with."

"But she's not dealing with it," said Bailey. "Not according to you. Look, whatever happened to her? Isn't there a chance that she's used to it hurting? That she doesn't need to deal with it because that's just the way it always is?"

Derek gave a weak nod. "Yeah…" Always. Since she was five. Plenty of time to get used to the pain.

"If you make her see it's hurting you too, that girl might start to change her tune."

"But what do I do about work, Bailey?" he asked as she stood up and straightened her lab coat. "What do I do?"

"Hey, I have no problem being her boss," she said with a shrug. "I'm not sending her home for you, but she can supervise the interns in the pit. If she's distracted down there, it won't be the end of the world."

"Thank you," he said, looking up in a rush of relief and gratitude.

"You're still going to have to have a conversation with her about the trial," said Bailey. "I'm just buying you some time. And not much time at that. You know how fast gossip travels. I wouldn't count on more than an hour before Grey knows that patient's here."

Derek chuckled dryly, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. "Yeah," he agreed.

Bailey walked to the door but stopped with her hand on the doorknob, glancing back at him. "I'll keep an eye on her too, Derek," she said. Her voice was gentle, and she gave him a reassuring smile.

"Thanks, Miranda," he said quietly. He watched her vanish from view, lost to the constant chaos of the hospital, before dragging himself to his feet as well. He had to think of what to say to Meredith.

-----

_So, yeah. This chapter is very much about Derek worrying and worrying and worrying. He gets to work still upset about how things went with Meredith that morning and immediately finds himself having to deal with the clinical trial and a patient that really, really needs him to go ahead and operate now, not three weeks from now. Three weeks from now would be much better for him and his relationship with Meredith, but Sarah doesn't have three weeks. And he desperately wants to save Sarah because bad things shouldn't happen to children and here's this tiny little girl who's dying. Sarah is very close in age to the Meredith who watched her mother slit her wrists, and, while his mind isn't connecting the two in any outright way that he's aware of, it's definitely there in his subconscious. Saving Sarah feels a lot like saving Meredith to him. Impossible but absolutely necessary. But, the one person who is basically the heart and soul of the trial, the one who kept him going the first time he did this…he can't bring himself to page her. Because while it's great he was there for her when she was falling apart, it was also incredibly terrifying for him. Because he's swam with her, and he knows there's no way she should've drowned. All of this feels like a repeat of what happened before to Derek, and he really believes that something's wrong with her. He ends up spilling it to Bailey because he had to let it out. Keeping all of his fears bottled up inside was getting to be too much. He was doing it to keep from burdening Meredith, but it was starting to become physically painful for him. And he trusts Bailey and her opinions, and, well, now she knows too. And yeah, that's about it for this chapter. Thank you for reading!_


	10. Chapter 9

_As usual, many, many thanks to those of you who reviewed the last chapter! I really look forward to getting to hear your thoughts on the story. I appreciate it a lot. So, thanks! You're all such lovely people. And here's the next chapter. I hope you enjoy!_

_-----_

"What do you mean I don't get to scrub in?" spluttered Meredith, staring at Bailey in disbelief. "I just spent all morning prepping Mr. Garcia for surgery!"

"Yes and thank you for that," said Bailey. She was looking down at the chart Meredith had brought her, giving tiny little nods of her head as she scanned the information.

"But you're still not going to let me scrub in?"

Bailey glanced up and nodded again. "Correct."

"Then why even have me prep him?" asked Meredith. "An intern could've done it." She could tell she sounded whiny, but she still had too much of a headache to care. This surgery was supposed to distract her from the clinical trial patient Derek apparently wasn't telling her about. She'd been counting on it.

"Because you're a junior resident," said Bailey sharply, snapping the chart shut. Meredith scrunched her face up into an apologetic grimace, but Bailey carried on. "I know you lot think you're hotshots now, but you're just one step up from the bottom of the surgical food chain. You've got to do the grunt work sometimes, Grey, and I don't need your help on this."

"I think I could really learn a lot though," said Meredith hopefully, changing tactics. "I'd love to watch you perform the anastomosis."

A small smirk tugged at the corners of Bailey's mouth. "Suckups," she said, shaking her head. "You're not scrubbing in."

"Fine," sighed Meredith. "Where do you want me then?" She rubbed her temple, trying to get rid of her lingering headache. The day was bad enough without it. "Can I see if Dr. Shepherd needs help?" she added on impulse. If Derek wasn't going to page her, she could at least go find out what his problem was.

"Has he paged you?" asked Bailey, a strange, troubled look passing across her face. Meredith frowned, unable to place it.

"Well, no," she admitted. "But there's a new clinical trial patient, and Derek had said I could--" Bailey raised her eyebrows, hands on her hips, and Meredith stopped abruptly. "I mean Dr. Shepherd," she amended. "He said, well he, you know…"

"No, I don't know," said Bailey.

"He told me I'd get to scrub in on the trial surgeries," said Meredith quietly, avoiding Bailey's eyes. As angry as she'd been at Cristina for saying she was in on the trial because she was sleeping with her boss, Derek wouldn't have talked to the Chief for anyone else. That much was true. Not that it really mattered anyway since he wasn't paging her. She fidgeted with her watch, waiting for a lecture, a comment, even another disapproving glare. All she got was a small, pitying smile.

"When Shepherd pages you, fine. Until then, I need you supervising the interns in the pit."

Meredith looked up, her relief quickly replaced by disappointment. "The pit?" she echoed. "Don't they know what they're doing by now? They've been interns for months."

"And they'll be interns for several more months," said Bailey. "They're still green. This isn't a debate, Grey." She gave Meredith a searching look, her eyes narrowing a little at the corners. "Can you handle this?" she asked. Her voice was gentle and concerned, and Meredith frowned, not sure what to make of the question.

"Yeah, yeah. Of course I can," she said, casting a furtive glance at her pager, just incase. It was blank. No missed pages. She felt Bailey's hand on her arm and jerked back up in surprise.

"I'm sure Derek will talk to you about the trial," said Bailey.

"Right…" Meredith pursed her lips together. Something seemed off. Bailey never called him Derek to her face. It was always Shepherd. Always. _She'd _just gotten glared at for calling him Derek. "Umm," she began tentatively.

"Pit, Grey," said Bailey, flipping Mr. Garcia's chart open again.

"Right." Meredith frowned and nodded. Triple-checked her silent pager. "I'm going."

The pit was the usual mess of energy and chaos, as loud and overcrowded as ever. Meredith stared at the people jostling back and forth as she tied her hair back in a ponytail, trying to deduce where she was needed. If anywhere. She couldn't spot a single stranded intern. She might as well just write her pager number up on the dry erase board and wander down to the cafeteria. Try to find Derek and get some sort of explanation. He sure owed her one.

She was halfway to the board when she caught sight of Cristina heading towards her. "Are you down here?" called Cristina. She came to an abrupt halt, leaving several feet of open floor between them. They'd never stood so far apart before. Never needed a buffer just to talk. Meredith stared down at the tile between them and felt dizzy, like it was some great, gaping chasm she was going to tumble into headfirst. She wished she knew what to say. Maybe that would kill the vertigo. She'd bring up their phone call if she could just think of a way to do it without mentioning Derek.

"Well are you?" repeated Cristina impatiently.

"Am I what?"

"Down here."

"Uh…yeah," said Meredith. "I guess."

"Good. Two needs help. The idiot's trying to do a mattress stitch and mangling some guy's arm in the process."

"Why can't you do it?" said Meredith. "He's your intern." She checked her pager again. "Besides, I have a thing."

"I have surgery," countered Cristina. "Bailey's gonna bite my head off if I'm late, so just do it, okay?" She started walking towards the elevator as if that was the end of it. Meredith stood stunned into silence, watching her retreating back for several seconds before starting forward in a rush.

"Bailey's surgery?" she called as she hurried to catch up. "Now? Her surgery now?"

"Yeah," said Cristina.

"As in the bowel resection for her diverticulitis patient? You're scrubbing in?"

Cristina just nodded and pushed the button for the elevator. "Yeah. Why do you care?"

"Because I spent all morning with the guy!" said Meredith. She looked at Cristina in disbelief. "I don't steal your patients!"

"What?" Cristina scoffed and turned to look at her. "I didn't steal your patient, and if I was going to take one, I wouldn't waste my time on diverticulitis guy. Besides, I've been stuck down here babysitting the freaks and geeks all morning. When would I even have time to troll?"

"I don't know," said Meredith. She felt prickly and irritated as if every thought was as rough as sandpaper to her mind. "How are you on the surgery if you were down here all morning?"

"Bailey called and put me on it," said Cristina.

"Right. Fine. Whatever…" Meredith shoved her hands into the pockets of her lab coat and turned to go.

"Maybe you prepped the wrong guy."

"I did not," began Meredith angrily, but she caught sight of the smirk on Cristina's face and cracked a smile despite herself. "I didn't prep the wrong guy," she muttered.

"Must've done something to piss her off," said Cristina. She was staring at the elevator, but there was a sudden gentleness to her voice as if she was trying to mend things between them. Meredith said nothing. The comments about Derek still smarted, but she didn't have the energy to bring them up and try to fix it. She didn't have the energy to defend Derek to Cristina, period. Not when he'd spent the morning trying to keep her home and Cristina got to scrub in on_ her_ surgery. He'd probably be glad to hear she was stuck in the pit. It was almost as good as the house. Her thoughts stopped dead and realization spilled over her, hot and burning like a fever.

"Derek did it," she blurted out. The pieces fit.

Cristina spun around, apparently losing interest in the elevator. "Derek kicked you off Bailey's surgery?" she asked, shuffling to the side to let the passengers pour out.

"Yes," said Meredith emphatically. Bailey's manner made sense. It all made sense. He'd said something. He'd gone and freaking said something to Bailey of all people.

"Why would he even care?"

"We had a thing. Whatever." Meredith shrugged, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. Her fingernails dug into her arms until it hurt, and at least that was a distraction. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Okay," said Cristina, turning to go.

"It's just… Who does he think he is?" she spluttered. "This isn't even his surgery!"

Cristina glanced back at her, a tiny smile in place as she punched the button for the elevator a second time. The doors slid open.

"He's not right about this," continued Meredith. She tightened her ponytail, yanking her hair hard enough to reawaken her headache. Anger and pain felt the same, flaring through her in unison. "He thinks he's right, but he's not."

Cristina snorted, her eyebrows shooting straight up. "Surgery now," she said as she walked backwards onto the elevator. "Details later. You wanna go to Joe's tonight?"

"Yeah." She answered without so much as a moment's hesitation. At least this felt normal again. And, if the morning was anything to go by, she was definitely going to need a drink tonight. She already needed one. "Eight o'clock?" she asked.

Cristina nodded. "Two's in curtain three. Go help him before he sutures his scrubs to the guy's skin?"

"That bad, huh?" said Meredith with a hint of a smile, but the doors slid shut and she was talking to no one. She sighed and turned her back on the elevator. Her pager was still silent and the pit had her trapped. Happiness sloughed off her like dead skin.

She surrendered to the messy rhythm of going and doing, overseeing the interns and signing off on their charts. Their proud attempts at treatment plans. The long litany of names she was creating to describe Derek fell more and more to the background until it was little more than white noise like ugly static on an old TV. Time passed quickly, and she'd made it a good hour without actively thinking about him when she felt her pager vibrating against her hipbone. She yanked it from her scrubs and stared. _OCR 3-C _was splashed across the tiny screen. The only person who ever paged her to an on-call room was Derek, and it was always for sex. Meredith rolled her eyes_._ If he thought he was getting any today…

Her anger came back in full force. It tasted metallic to the tip of her tongue, but it propelled her through the hospital with all the force of a raging storm. There was a ringing in her ears, and even the slap of her shoes against the tile seemed too loud. He was unbelievable. He was truly unbelievable. When she found on-call room 3-C, she didn't even bother with knocking. Just pushed the door open and walked in. Sure enough, he was sitting there on the edge of the bed, a scrub cap still on and his head in his hands. He glanced up as she shut the door.

"Hey," he said in a low, tired voice.

Meredith crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. "If you paged me here for sex, forget about it."

"If I what?" asked Derek, shaking his head. "That's not…no. That's not why." He looked down at the ground between his feet, his posture an odd combination of tension and dejection. "We need to talk."

"Yeah," said Meredith flatly. "We do." Her bad mood was a lifeboat in this strange sea the morning had flung her into, and she clung to it. "What did you say to Bailey?"

Derek's head jerked up, his eyes widening. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about whatever _you _said to her to get me stuck in the pit," said Meredith. "I spent all morning prepping her patient for surgery, and then she lets Cristina scrub in and sends me down to babysit interns!"

"I'm sure Bailey thought you'd be helpful there."

"Please," she said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. She pushed away from the wall and walked over to stand in front of him. "You've been trying to keep me home since you got up today. This has your name written all over it."

"Meredith…"

"Did you talk to her about me or not?"

He was silent for a long time, staring at her with dark eyes and a distant frown. When he finally nodded, Meredith recoiled.

"Unbelievable," she hissed.

"It's not what you think," said Derek quickly.

"It's not what I think?" echoed Meredith with a hollow laugh. She backed away from the bed, and he followed her to his feet. "Why don't you just take my mother's diary and write up all your favorite bits on the OR board? Go ahead and tell the whole freaking hospital! What the hell, Derek? That wasn't for you to share."

"I didn't say a word about the diary," said Derek. "Not a single word about what happened with your mother." He reached out for her hand but she yanked it back.

"Yeah, well you sure said enough to get me kicked out of the OR," she snapped. Her stomach was in knots, and she could hear her heartbeat banging like a war drum inside her head.

"Meredith, it's not like—"

"Just couldn't resist getting your way, huh?" she asked, cutting him off. She saw his eyes flash and knew she was inching them closer and closer to the point where they'd stop talking and start screaming at each other. She was far past caring. He'd pulled her from Bailey's surgery. She was pretty sure that meant she could kiss the clinical trial goodbye as well.

"It's not about getting my way." His voice rose to match hers and he stepped closer. "I told Bailey I was worried about you because I am."

Meredith rolled her eyes. "You need to find a way to drop your overblown savior complex because this is getting ridiculous. I don't need protecting, and I'm not too damaged to do my job."

"I don't have a savior complex," said Derek indignantly.

"Then why'd you page me here? I'm off the clinical trial, right? Isn't that what you're going to tell me?" She saw the guilt flash across his face and laughed out loud to hide the pain. "Of course it is," she muttered, turning away from him.

"You know about the patient?" asked Derek. His voice was quiet, gentle, washing over her like a lullaby as she stared at the wall, her chest heaving with every breath.

"George told me," she said, blinking away sudden, stinging tears. She'd cried enough in the past twenty-four hours to last a lifetime. There could be no tears. She sucked in a rattling breath and kept her back to him. "Congratulated me, actually," she said. "The whole good luck with the trial thing, which would be great, but…you don't want me on it." Her voice broke and a single tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped it away like it was something hateful.

"Mer," said Derek. She felt the heat radiating from his body as he stepped closer. "It's not that I don't want you on it. I love working with you." His breath was warm against the back of her neck, but he wasn't touching her.

"But I'm not on it, am I?"

He sighed heavily and that was all she needed to know. Her shoulders slumped like she was a marionette and he'd cut the strings. "I want you on the trial, Meredith. I do, but not today," he said. "You shouldn't be here today, and I'm not going to apologize for trying to keep you safe when it is so clearly what you need."

His voice hurt her ears, and she thought the ground might dissolve. Her mother had got to him. Ellis was dead and _still_ she found a way to ruin things.

"I never should've let you read the diary," she whispered, turning around. He looked like she'd just slapped him, and she kept talking so she wouldn't have to care. "It's freaking you out. I know it is. I tell you I'm fine, and you won't even listen."

"I don't listen because I know by now that's a lie," said Derek. His hands clamped down on her shoulders, keeping her in front of him. "You're always fine because you never deal with anything."

"I've dealt with _this_," said Meredith. Therapy was on the tip of her tongue, but when she met his eyes she couldn't find the words. The room was smothering and she wanted out. Her face flushed and she pushed at his hands. She wasn't strong enough to break his grip, but he let go anyway, sighing like she'd disappointed him. "I told you already. My mother didn't really want to die."

"She slit her wrists, Meredith."

"I know that!" she shouted. "I was there, remember? All I'm saying is she didn't want to die."

"People don't slit their wrists just for kicks," said Derek.

"She wanted Richard to come back to her," she snapped. Her hands were in fists, fingernails cutting half moons into her palms. This was about love not death, and he was flat out refusing to see the truth.

"And that makes it okay?" asked Derek incredulously. "She wanted him back, and so you're okay with it?"

"Yes! What else is there to be? It happened. It's over and done. You move on."

"But you're not okay with it." He caught her hand again, entwining their fingers. "Last night, you were definitely not okay with it."

She cringed at the memory. "That was last night," she said. "Not today. Why can't it just stay as last night?"

A dam seemed to break somewhere behind Derek's eyes, and it was he who let go this time, dropping her hand. "Here we go again," he muttered.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means…" He stopped and shook his head as if he'd changed his mind. "No. Do you honestly expect me to just forget about last night so you can pretend you're fine again?" he asked, his voice loud and rough and overwhelming. "Because I will not do that for you, Meredith. You were catatonic." She turned away to stare at the wall. The overhead light was dying a slow death, buzzing and flickering in and out, making their shadows dance. "I had to _carry_ you out of the shower so you wouldn't give yourself pneumonia or hypothermia or whatever it was you were trying to accomplish in there."

She hugged her arms tightly to her chest, folding into herself as best she could with him standing so close. The light bulb flirted with darkness but wouldn't commit. "You think there's something wrong with me?" she asked quietly. The words got stuck in her throat and she had to force them out.

At first he said nothing back and she had only his breathing for company. When he did speak, every word was its own sentence, slow and cautious. Calculated. "I think what your mother did could go a long way to explaining why you…" He sighed. "Why sometimes you're--"

"So messed up?" supplied Meredith. She put her back to the wall and faced him. "That's what you're trying to say, right? You just haven't come up with the pretty, pretty words you need yet?" She trembled and her voice shook as if there was an earthquake somewhere deep inside her heart. Derek was silent and she had to force herself to breathe, willing the room not to blur with tears. "You see this?" she asked. "This is why I don't like to talk about my mother." She pushed away from the wall and started to pace, her voice escalating with every step. "It's why I waited so long to tell you. You haven't even known twenty-four hours, and already you think I can't do my job. You don't want me on the clinical trial!" she cried, her voice breaking. Derek reached out and caught her by the arms, pulling her close.

"Hey, hey," he murmured. "Easy, Mer."

She stumbled to a halt and looked up at him, eyes threatening to overflow. "You think my mother's made me all fucked in the head, don't you?"

"I don't think that," he said gently.

"Then quit acting like you think I'm on some kind of psychotic break, okay? Just because she slit her wrists doesn't mean I'm going to slit mine."

"Okay," said Derek. He spoke too quickly; that one word was riddled with holes. The truth came to her as quiet as a whisper in the night when he didn't meet her eyes. Like an ice cube dropped down the back of her shirt, it slipped swiftly down her spine and left her cold.

"You don't believe me…" she said. There was horror in her voice.

He shook his head. "I said okay."

"Say it like you mean it, Derek."

He stared at her in silence for a long time. The only sound was the dying light above them. She wondered what they'd do if it burnt out. Fight it out in the darkness? Walk to another room like this was the sort of conversation that didn't hurt with every word?

"It'd be easier to believe you if you didn't have a history with things like this," said Derek at last, bowing his head under a weight she couldn't see.

She slithered out of his arms. "What are you talking about?"

"You know exactly what I'm talking about." His voice was thin as ice about to break, and she felt nauseous. "You drowned yourself."

Meredith bristled like a cornered animal. Something snapped and then they were shouting. "I was pushed in!" she said.

"That's not the point," said Derek. "You didn't swim!"

"It was cold," she said, backing up until she reached the wall. He followed her, and the space between them shriveled down to something tiny and red hot.

"I know it was cold." He leaned forward, his hands against the wall on either side of her head. She felt all the ways he wasn't touching her, and it was enough to make her want to scream. "Do you know how many tries it took me to find you?" he asked in a voice she'd never heard before. Broken edges and battered things. That was how he spoke. She said nothing. "Do you?" demanded Derek.

The room was spinning when she found her voice. "No."

"Six," he said. "So don't you dare look at me and tell me it was too cold to swim. We both know you're the better swimmer, and I did it six times. Until my lungs were on fire and I couldn't feel my feet." His eyes cut into her, and she shook like she had that day in the bay. When the water had been as brutal as the edge of a knife. Derek had felt it too. "I know _exactly_ how cold it was in there."

His words took the ground away and she scrambled for something, anything to say. This was not a conversation she'd ever thought they'd have. "Where's all this even coming from?" she asked at last. She placed a tentative hand on his shoulder, but his body didn't ground her the way it usually did. "It was months ago," she whispered, still reeling. "And it changed me. I came back changed."

"It changed me too," said Derek. He cradled her cheek in the palm of his hand and brushed his thumb over her lower lip. "You had no pulse," he said quietly, thoughtfully. There was something distant to the sound. "I held your corpse in my arms. The dead body of the woman I love." He shook his head, smiling sadly. "That changes a person." He closed his eyes and drew in a single, shuddering breath. When he opened them again they shone with tears. "Tell me the truth, Meredith," he said. "You never answer me. You didn't swim and you damned well know how."

His voice was like a corkscrew to her mind, and she couldn't meet his eyes. Even if he knew, admitting it was something else entirely. She felt torn in two and trapped against the wall. "It was just a moment," she said at last in a voice that sounded very small. "One stupid, tiny moment where I, I…" She stared up at the dying light and wished it would go out; shameful things could be said easier in darkness. Meredith closed her eyes. "I didn't see the point," she whispered.

"In living?" he asked incredulously.

She kept her eyes shut. "Yes."

Derek let out a noise that sounded a lot like a sob and turned away from her, his shoulders shaking. He lifted a hand as if he meant to rake it back through his hair only to be stopped by the scrub cap still sitting there. He yanked it off, crumpling the ferryboats in his fist.

He wasn't pinning her to the wall anymore, and the sudden freedom felt strange and surreal. Like floating. She took a cautious step in his direction; that felt as safe as walking on a tightrope. Strung out high above a reality that could kill her if she so much as slipped. "Derek, it's okay," she said. She wrung her hands together and tiptoed closer. It had to be okay, but he wasn't turning around. "It was stupid, but it's over now. It's over," she pleaded. "I'm alive. It doesn't have to be a big deal."

He spun around to face her. The look in his eyes was raw and devastated, and it seared right through her soul. "It _is_ a big deal," he said in a rough voice. "You were dead."

"I know that," said Meredith, trying to hold herself together, but he stepped closer, shaking his head.

"No, you don't know," said Derek forcefully. "You were dead. You have no idea what it was like to sit there and wait for hours while they tried again and again to bring you back."

She stared up at him speechless, shrinking down into herself. She couldn't tell if the tears were in her eyes or his.

"Have you even looked at your chart?" he demanded, and something within her started to unravel. "Do you have any idea how many rounds of ACLS drugs they pumped into you? Burke had to put you on cardiopulmonary bypass! They ran your blood through a fucking machinejust to try and save your life, and you did it to yourself."

"I don't…" She trailed off before she'd barely started, not knowing what to say. This was worse than the diary. The look in his eyes made breathing an impossibility. Coherent thought was long gone too. She felt paralyzed and accused.

Derek shook his head. "The world can snatch your life away from you whenever it wants," he said. "And there is nothing you can do to stop it, Meredith. Nothing." He slammed his hand against the wall, leaning into it like it hurt to stand. "But you are not supposed to go looking for ways to throw that life away," he shouted. "Not anyone and especially not you!"

Meredith listened to the sound of her heart pounding inside her head. There was a hole in it right where the love was supposed to go. Her ribs had hurt when she'd come back from drowning. She'd been speckled with bruises from all the chest compressions and laughter had been agony for a few days, but it was nothing to the way his words were crushing her. She felt blindsided like she'd been taken down by a truck, splattered against some impartial stretch of pavement. If only he'd stop yelling then maybe she could think.

He didn't stop.

"That is why I'm worried about you," he continued loudly, pushing her further and further inside herself. "No, that is why I'm _terrified. _Because Ellis is essentially back from the dead, and how can I be sure it won't happen again?" He circled closer and she felt ensnared.

"I guess you can't," she choked out, stumbling away from him. Her voice was bitterly sarcastic and full of all the tears she'd kept out of her eyes. "Lucky you. You're dating a psycho who's going to kill herself over a diary." She bit down hard on the inside of her cheek to keep from sobbing.

"Don't joke about this," pleaded Derek.

Don't joke about it. Right. Because she really was some sort of suicidal maniac who was just waiting for the opportune moment to off herself. She shook her head and grabbed the doorknob. "I can't. I…" She swallowed the lump in her throat but couldn't bring herself to meet his eyes. She knew what she'd find there without looking. Accusation, disappointment. No one loves a failure. "I have to get back to the pit," she whispered.

She missed the words he said in reply as she pushed the door open and let her feet carry her far, far away. She walked without thinking. All she had left was motion. To stop would be to fall apart, and so Meredith kept walking until she was far away from the on-call room and all the accusations in Derek's eyes. His voice still echoed inside her head. Shouting, always shouting. She shouldered her way into the stairwell and raced up a flight of stairs. The hallway was too crowded when she reemerged, teeming with patients and nurses and doctors, visitors and orderlies. People everywhere. She felt sick and panicky at the sight of them. Smothering. She stumbled down the hall, breathing in shallow fits and gasps. Drowning again. The faces were already starting to blur when she reached a supply closet and slipped inside.

She slumped to the ground and curled forward, gasping for air. Her palms were cold and slick with sweat, her heart a jackhammer in her throat. She closed her eyes and forced herself to draw in one slow, painful breath after another.

"Are you okay?" asked someone in a quiet voice.

Meredith cried out in surprise, looking up. She was bleary eyed and panting, but she could make out the shape of another woman sitting at the far end of the supply closet. An old pair of jeans and an ill fitting sweatshirt took the place of scrubs, marking her as someone who was most likely a patient or a visitor. Meredith sucked in another breath, trying to get enough oxygen in her lungs to answer.

The woman scooted forward and placed a slender hand on her arm. "Do you need help?" she asked. "Should I try to find somebody?"

Meredith shook her head and finally managed to speak. "No…" She wiped her palms on her scrubs and gave the woman a shaky smile. "Thank you, though."

"You're sure you're okay?" she asked uncertainly.

Meredith drew in one slow, deep breath and then another. On the third try, her lungs stopped burning. She placed her fingers over her carotid artery with some satisfaction. Her pulse was slowing down. "Yeah," said Meredith. "I'm a doctor." She put her usual confidence back into her voice and watched as the woman visibly relaxed. Definitely a patient or a visitor then. She smiled again. "I'm fine."

"Good," said the woman. "Good." She had a round, pretty face with messy blonde hair that looked like it hadn't been combed in a few days. She clutched a pack of tissues in her hand and several balled up ones littered the floor around her.

"Um," said Meredith, glancing at the tear streaks on the woman's face. "Are _you_ alright?"

"I'm, I'm, oh," stammered the woman. "I'm sorry! I know I'm probably breaking all kinds of rules being in here, but I just…" She pulled out a fresh tissue and dabbed at her eyes. "I didn't want to cry in front of my husband or my daughter, and people kept coming into the restroom!" She smiled wryly, a watery little laugh slipping past her lips. "It's a hospital. You'd think they'd have better places to cry."

"They do," said Meredith simply. "Supply closets." The woman laughed again and nodded her head. She shifted forward as if to stand up, but Meredith held out a hand. "You can stay in here longer. If you need to," she said. "No rush."

"Okay," said the woman as a fresh flood of tears pooled in her eyes. "Maybe I will." She sniffled and leaned back against the shelf. "Thank you, um, Doctor…"

"Grey," said Meredith. "Uh, Meredith, though," she added in a soft voice. Dr. Grey sounded far too formal for the floor of a supply closet.

"Olivia," said the woman.

"Right, Olivia. Well…" Meredith looked around the closet. It was dark and quiet, comforting. She started to stand herself. "I should let you—"

The woman shook her head, her hand lifting slightly before flopping back to her lap. The message was clear: stay. It hurts to cry alone. "My daughter's dying," she said quietly. The words were tentative, as if testing out some new reality she wanted no part in.

"Oh." Meredith settled back against the wall. "I'm so sorry," she said.

"Yeah." Olivia nodded. "Me too." She closed her eyes but more tears leaked out, slipping past her eyelids to run down her face and stain the pale green of her sweatshirt a darker emerald. "She was coloring this morning," she whispered, eyes still closed. "I thought that was a good sign, you know? That she had a lot of strength. But now she's just lying there too tired to draw, and I'm hiding in a closet like the world's worst mother."

"No," said Meredith. "You're a person. It hurts. There's no one right way to do this."

Olivia buried her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking. "Tell that to my husband," she said, the words escaping along with a sound that might have been laughter, might have been tears. She sat curled tightly for a long time, lost in some messy form of sorrow, fingers tugging at the roots of her hair. Meredith was silent, watching as her own pain shriveled up and turned insignificant beside the woman's grief. "You said you were a doctor?" asked Olivia at last, snuffling a little as she straightened up.

"I am," agreed Meredith.

"Can I ask you, do you know if…" Olivia bit her lip and looked up at the ceiling, blinking rapidly as fresh tears streamed down her face. "Does it help children to know that they're dying? Because we haven't, we haven't told Sarah. My husband thinks we should, but I just," she shook her head fiercely, "I can't, I don't." She gulped a breath of air and moaned a little. "I don't want to tell her. I don't want her to be scared."

Meredith balled the hem of her lab coat into a fist, squeezing so hard her knuckles hurt. "How old is your daughter?" she asked.

"Six," said Olivia.

Meredith nodded, trying to think back to cases she'd seen. "I haven't worked in peds that much," she said apologetically. "I'm probably not the best person to answer your question, but even at six, even if they haven't been told they're dying, they usually have a sense that their body's failing them. They're, actually, they're often more worried about leaving their parents behind than about death itself, and talking about that can be good. I've seen it help families."

"That's what my husband feels," said Olivia, her voice hoarse. She had been slowly ripping her tissues into little shreds, leaving scraps of white all over the faded denim of her jeans, but her hands stilled and she looked up. "It's just Sarah has this one last shot," she said, a faint flicker of hope in her eyes. "She's in some sort of experimental trial that's apparently been successful. Once."

"Once?" echoed Meredith, the number tugging at her mind like a hangnail caught on a snag. Beth had been one.

"Yeah, once." Olivia laughed softly, nodding her head. "Not the type of odds it's easy to trust, I know, but there's nothing else to even try at this point. So we're gonna do it, and oh God, I don't want to tell her because I don't want her to go into that surgery thinking she could die. She needs to believe she's going to live._ I _need my baby to live." Tears were still dripping down Olivia's face, but she no longer seemed to notice. She picked up another tissue and ripped it in two. "Do you know what it's like to watch someone you love die?" she asked, her voice faint and frayed around the edges like an old secret.

"I, um…" Meredith closed her eyes and saw Derek's face.

_I held your corpse in my arms. The dead body of the woman I love. _

"It changes a person," she said quietly. Olivia only nodded, eyes screwed shut and leaking tears. Meredith hesitated a moment, fidgeting with her watch, and then the question came tumbling out before she could stop it. "I'm sorry but is your daughter in Dr. Shepherd's trial by any chance?"

Olivia's eyes flew open, filled with a sudden, brilliant flash of life. "Yes," she said. "Do you know him?"

Meredith nodded, feeling stunned. Here was the surgery she wouldn't get to see. "He's a brilliant surgeon," she said.

"Yes, he must be," said Olivia. "His credentials…I didn't know what half of them even meant, but there sure were a lot of them." Her hair was tear-soaked and matted to her face, and she pushed at it absently. "Do you know him personally?" she asked.

"What?" said Meredith, nearly choking on the word.

"Are you good friends with Dr. Shepherd or is he just a colleague?"

She hesitated, glancing down at her shoes. The toes were scuffed, the laces dingy. Thinking of Derek made her ache.

"I only ask because I need to know what sort of man he is," continued Olivia hesitantly. "I've met him and he seems very nice. But he's just a face to me, and if Sarah doesn't survive the surgery, he's the person who's going to be there when she dies. It should be me. If she has to go before I do, she shouldn't have to die in some strange room, strapped down to a table surrounded by strangers. She should be in my arms. And Mike's. She should be with us." Olivia's chin quivered, and she struggled to keep speaking through a fresh onslaught of tears. "But if it happens in the OR, I need to know that she has someone good with her," she said. "That she's with a good person, so please, tell me you know him. Tell me you know what he's like."

Meredith nodded slowly. "I know him very well," she said at last. Her voice was thin and shaky, and she felt tears in the corners of her eyes. They settled down there, blurring her vision but refusing to fall. "If he's the one with your daughter, then you should know his name is Derek," she said quietly. "Derek Christopher Shepherd. He can be arrogant and he always thinks he's right," she said, the words tumbling out quickly, tinged with the residual heat of their argument. "He usually ends up being right though, so I guess there's at least some sort of precedence there." She scrunched her nose up a little, smiling despite herself.

Olivia just nodded. "Go on," she said.

"Well, he takes his job very seriously. He'll talk your ear off if you get him started on anything related to neurosurgery. Actually," she frowned, "that's not quite true. It doesn't have to be surgery. He'll talk about whatever. He does this chatty thing where he goes on and on and thinks he's charming, but he usually _is_ being charming so I let him talk."

She stopped abruptly, her cheeks flushing. It had to be painfully obvious that she knew Derek as one half of Derek and Meredith, but when she glanced at Olivia, her face was impassive. Their fight felt devastating next to the normalcy of her memories. She missed him then with a sudden, staggering intensity that would've bowled her over if she wasn't already on the ground; she wanted to turn back time to a night when she'd been able to fall asleep in his arms.

"He likes the outdoors," she continued at last. "Fishing, camping, that sort of thing." Houses made of candles and hills to paint the future on. "He owns all this land, this beautiful land, which is kinda funny because he's from Manhattan, but I think Seattle's more him." A little sliver of a laugh escaped her, and her eyes slipped shut for a moment. "I like to think he's happier here," she said quietly. "His family's still on the east coast though. Four sisters and way too many nieces and nephews to count."

"Does he have kids?" asked Olivia.

Meredith's eyes flew open again and she shook her head. "No," she said. The answer left her feeling guilty, but she wasn't sure why. They could have them. Someday. She wouldn't say no. Assuming they still knew how to talk to each other after everything that had been said, she wouldn't say no. She shivered and hugged her knees to her chest, staring at the shelves until all the supplies started to blend and blur together. "Not yet," she said, her voice growing soft and distant. "He wants them though. He'd be a good dad, I think. He, um, he takes care of the people he loves. He wants to keep them safe."

"He sounds like a good man," said Olivia as she pulled out another tissue.

"He is," said Meredith. "You can trust him with your daughter."

"Yes. I think I can." She turned away slightly to blow her nose before looking back at Meredith and offering her a shaky smile. "The two of you must be very happy together."

Meredith just blinked at her. "Excuse me?" she stammered, caught off guard.

"You're a couple, aren't you?" She spoke as if there was no doubt. "The way you talk about him, it's gentle, familiar. Like he's your lover."

"Oh," said Meredith. "That's not…" An easy question. She felt adrift. But Olivia was watching her curiously, and she nodded her head. "Yeah," she said at last. "He's my boyfriend."

"That's nice," said Olivia. Meredith nodded again, unsure of what to say. The sound of her pager going off filled the sudden silence, her muscles tensing in the moment it took her to twist around and pull it from her scrubs. She sighed when she saw the number, relaxing a little. The pit was paging her back, and she couldn't tell if she felt disappointment or relief that it wasn't Derek. Somehow it seemed a lot like both.

"I'm sorry, but I have to get back to work," she said and clambered to her feet.

"Of course," said Olivia. She started gathering her many discarded tissues. "I should probably get back to my family."

They reached the door at the same time, Olivia smoothing her messy curls back into some semblance of order with a trembling hand. Her smile was pretty but didn't make it anywhere near her eyes; faith always suffered the most when children died.

"For what it's worth," said Meredith quietly. "Derek is one of the best. I know you're scared, and I'm not going to say you shouldn't be, but you should have some hope too."

Olivia nodded, clutching her tissues to her chest. "I'll try," she said before opening the door. Meredith watched as she walked down the hall and out of sight.

-----

The rest of the day passed slowly. Her anger had dulled and faded, replaced by a heaviness she felt deep down inside her. It shadowed everything like a storm cloud taking away the sun. She sutured and charted and answered interns' questions all on autopilot; her mind was absent, stuck in that place without the sun, trying to think of what to say to Derek. Sorry for drowning. For not seeing how it changed you too. But he'd kicked her off of surgery, and she didn't see how one made the other okay.

She ended up at home in an empty house without really remembering the drive that brought her there. It was too quiet, and she sat with the TV on just to have some sound. One hour bled into two and then drifted on towards three. She fell asleep with a pillow clutched in her arms, worn well past exhausted from a night without sleep.

Meredith started awake at the sound of her phone and pushed herself up, groggy and disoriented with a crick in her neck. She fished around in the couch cushions for her phone and opened it without bothering to check the caller id.

"Derek?" she said as she muted the television.

"No, it's me," said a voice that definitely wasn't his. Cristina.

Meredith yawned. "Oh. Hey," she said. She tried to mask her disappointment that it wasn't him. He wasn't here. She hadn't seen him since their fight and he still wasn't home. Loneliness made her hug the pillow tighter.

"It's almost nine," said Cristina.

Meredith squinted at the old analog clock that hung on the wall. The lights were out and the house was dark, but the glow from television screen was enough to show the hour. Cristina was right. Almost nine and he still wasn't home.

"I thought we were meeting at Joe's at eight?"

"Crap," said Meredith. Another thing to feel bad about. She hadn't even thought about their plans since fighting with Derek. "We did say that."

"Are you still at the hospital?" asked Cristina.

"No, I'm…I think I fell asleep," she said apologetically. "I was up all night."

There was a long pause and then, "Do you still wanna come?"

Meredith sighed and got to her feet. In the past, Cristina never would've asked. She would've told her she could sleep when she was dead and to get off her lazy ass and into Joe's already. She didn't understand why everything had to go weird all at once.

"I don't know," she said as she walked to the front window and peered out at the street. There was no sign of Derek's car. Not even the glow of headlights in the distance to give her hope. He wasn't here. "I…"

"Come on," said Cristina. "It's just Izzie and Alex here, and I've had enough of the sex eyes they keep giving each other. You need to save me."

"I need to save you?" echoed Meredith. She smiled a little and reached up, trying to guess what damage her nap had done to her hair. "I think they're kinda sweet together."

"No, Mer. It's nauseating. Are you coming or not?

Meredith glanced out at her street again. Her heart sunk when she found it as dark as before. He hadn't called. He wasn't here. She suddenly, desperately did not want to wait around for him to not show up. "Yeah," she said quietly. "I'm coming." She turned her back on the darkened street. "Just give me ten minutes."

-----

_So yeah, Derek finally got a chance to air his long bottled up feelings on the Meredith drowning thing. And it could've gone better. Meredith was already pissed because she doesn't take well to his whole overprotective thing, and Derek decided to express himself through a lot of yelling, which made her shut down and flee. Not the best of all possible outcomes. Because, while this is something Derek has been obsessing about since finding her in the shower, it's completely out of the blue for Meredith. And what he has to say is hard for her to hear. She feels bad and accused, guilty and overwhelmed, not to mention still very hurt that he's keeping her off the clinical trial. While he believes he has her best interests at heart, it was actually a pretty stupid idea and one that hurt her a lot. So yeah, all of that adds up and they don't sit down and talk it out like calm, rational adults. They're both too hurt and upset for that. Meredith runs and ends up in a closet along with Olivia, Sarah's mother. This ends up being a very good thing for her. Olivia is quite possibly losing her six year old daughter, and that helps Meredith stop dwelling on everything that happened with Derek because her problems feel like nothing next to this woman's grief. And talking about Derek for Olivia's benefit helps her to get past being angry at him. She's frustrated and hurt, yes, but when she sits down and thinks about it, she loves him and there's a lot of good there. So Meredith ends up at home, essentially waiting for him because she knows they left things very unfinished and still need to talk. But when he doesn't come home right away, all of her old insecurities start to pop up. If he's avoiding her, she doesn't want to sit around and think about how he isn't showing up. That sounds too painful. So she goes out with Cristina because things have been kinda weird with her too, but maybe she can at least fix them and have one thing that feels normal. And yeah, that's pretty much it. Things were definitely angsty for MerDer, but Derek finally told Meredith his side of things, and that's going to be good for them. Thanks for reading!_


	11. Chapter 10

_I'm so sorry this took so long. Thank you to everyone who's been so patient and stuck with the story and for your kind reviews. I appreciate them so much!_

-----

Derek unzipped his briefcase and dumped in a thick stack of paperwork, casting another glance at his watch as he did. Nine thirty pm. He wasn't sure where the day had gone, but somehow late afternoon had morphed quickly into night when he'd been looking the other way. Sarah's case had kept him going nonstop since his last surgery, mapping out her treatment with a focused desperation that zapped him of his strength. What little he had left was zeroing in on Meredith as surely as metal to a magnet; he needed to get home. He rooted around for his keys, trying to calculate how long it would take if he stopped and checked on Sarah first one last time.

A knock on the open door interrupted his thoughts. "You paged?" asked Hess as he paused at the threshold. His usually spiky brown hair lay plastered against his skull, a sure sign of recent escape from a scrub cap, and the lack of volume made his ears seem even more prominent than usual.

"I did," said Derek. "How's Sarah holding up?"

"The latest adjustments to her meds seem to be working. It's been three hours since I added the tegretol, and she hasn't seized yet."

"Good," said Derek. He found his keys in a drawer and straightened up with a small, weary sigh, dropping them into the pocket of his coat. Time to go home.

"Yes, sir." Hess shuffled his weight back and forth, looking like a tall, skinny tree, stripped of its leaves and swaying in a breeze. "Are you going to operate soon?" he blurted, poorly disguised eagerness dripping down every word, sticky as honey. Derek nodded as he shouldered his briefcase and turned off his desk lamp. He could remember what it was like to be poised at the very end of residency, the rush that came from staring out at all that possibility. Everything that was going to happen next. Every surgery was as thrilling as the next, and the risks were just this muted thing, a shadow against the back wall that didn't have to be looked at yet. Somewhere along the line, it got easier to notice the shadows. Sarah's chances of dying were excellent. Of living, he wasn't so sure.

"I'm going to operate as soon as possible," he said. "She's fighting the clock with these seizures. Schedule an OR for tomorrow morning and assign a resident to monitor her overnight before you go."

Hess backed up into the hall, leaving room for Derek to lock his office. "Certainly," he said.

"Thank you," said Derek. The two men fell into step as they made their way down the quiet hallway. Nearly every office was empty at this hour. He chanced another glance at his watch and thought of Meredith. He'd gotten more out of her in the past twenty-four hours than he had in the entire year and a half he'd known her, and all her secrets settled over him like a heavy fog, muting every thought and color and sound, muting everything that wasn't her. She'd given up. He'd always known she had, but it was something else to hear it out loud in her own voice, her own words. She just…hadn't seen the point. She hadn't seen the point in living. What were you supposed to say back to something like that? His stomach clenched again and again in sick, unhappy waves, and he huffed morosely to himself.

"Sir?" said Hess, looking over at him. His long, friendly face was rendered almost comical by his oversized ears and flattened hair, but his expression was serious. "Is everything alright?"

"Yes," said Derek automatically. He took a deep breath, shoveling all thoughts of Meredith deep down inside himself for the time being. It was like trying to contain everything within a pot that was already troubled and boiling over, but instead of just turning the flame down, he was clamping a lid over the entire spewing, sputtering mess. It burned his hands and it wouldn't last long, but it would hold for now. He had at least twenty more minutes of professionalism left in him tonight. He looked at Hess and smiled. "You've familiarized yourself with the procedure?" he asked.

Hess gave an emphatic nod and even his ears seemed eager. ""I've been going over all the records. I'm ready to assist, sir."

"Good," said Derek, his voice quiet. He'd taught Meredith how to do the injections himself, walking her through the entire surgery step by step, explaining the how and the why behind everything he did before it happened. But Hess wasn't just a hop and a skip past his internship. He did the vast majority of his surgeries on his own at this point, and Derek found himself incredibly grateful that he could just teach this procedure as it happened in the OR. The prospect of spending the night shut up in one of the work rooms, simulating injections into a model brain didn't sound anywhere near as thrilling with Hess's gangly limbs slotted into Meredith's spot beside him.

Derek came to an abrupt halt as they reached an intersection in the hallway. One branch led to the elevator and the parking lot. To home and Meredith. The other, to Sarah's room. He hesitated in the crossroads, looking one way then the other like a pedestrian balking at a busy intersection. "I'm going to let Sarah's parents know she's having surgery tomorrow," he decided at last. "Any final questions?"

"No, sir," said Hess. "I won't keep you. I know it's late. You must be wanting to head home."

"Yeah," said Derek with a twinge of guilt. "Home." To Meredith. His hand brushed against the phone clipped to his belt, but he didn't unhook it. A phone call would be awkward anyway, and this wouldn't take long. "Good work today, Dr. Hess." Hess grinned his thanks, his smile stretching from one large ear to the other, and loped off in the opposite direction.

The floor nurse spotted him soon after, ready with a bubbly good evening and an update on Sarah delivered in concise, bullet point form, punctuated with an excess of dimpled smiles. Patient has been experiencing some abdominal pain. Smile. Nausea is intermittent. Giggly smile. Patient is also reporting fatigue. Smile, smile, smile. Derek tried to find it in himself to smile back, but it felt more like a twisted grimace than anything passing for the actual expression. Sarah was dying. Meredith already had, and he'd yelled at her for it. He had no smiles left. The floor nurse didn't seem to mind. She just took his instructions and bounced away, happy enough for the both of them.

He entered Sarah's room quietly, easing the door open. The lights were out save for a single, small lamp. Olivia wasn't there, but Mike lay sprawled across the utilitarian sofa wedged against the far wall. He was squinting halfheartedly at a newspaper, angling it to catch what little light there was. Dark circles ran wild beneath his eyes and, unlike the nurse, he didn't bother with a smile.

Derek nodded a silent hello and padded over to the bed, his shoes making soft scuffing sounds against the tile. Sarah slept on her side, a worn old teddy bear resting in the crook of her arm. Just like any other kid. He never would've guessed she'd spent the better part of her day shaking with seizures and lapsing away into heavily medicated lethargy if he hadn't seen it himself. Sarah stirred as he scribbled a few quick notes in her chart, eyelids fluttering rapidly for a moment before flying open like she'd snapped out of a trance. She stared up at him and clutched her bear tighter.

"Shhh, go back to sleep, Sarah," said Derek.

The child just blinked again. "Dr. Shepherd," she mumbled in a soft, sleepy lisp.

"That's right. You can go back to sleep."

She breathed in heavily, seeming to sag into her pillow. "Did you like it?" she whispered.

"Did I like what?"

"The pitcher." She rubbed at her eyes with a tiny fist and Derek smiled. Tiny and ineffectual. The fists were right, the hair, even the pouting lower lip. All he had to do was squint and she was Meredith's daughter. His daughter. _Theirs._ "Daddy!" she called out and the fantasy shattered like taking a hammer to a sheet of glass.

Mike was at her side in an instant, the newspaper falling from his lap, pages whispering and rustling as they settled forgotten over the ground. "What is it, Sarah-bear?" he asked. Derek stepped back, feeling sick; he didn't get to impose his fantasies over another man's dying child.

"Did you give the pitcher?"

"Not yet, sweetheart," said Mike softly, glancing at Derek. "I can do that now though, okay? You rest and I'll find the picture."

"Find it, Daddy," she insisted as he started rummaging through a pile of loose leaf paper and glossy magazines.

"I'm looking. I can't remember where Mommy put it."

Derek forced himself to focus on Sarah's chart, signing off on the notes Hess had made throughout the day. He'd just about finished when Mike whooped triumphantly and straightened up, a folded piece of paper in hand. He pumped it up and down in the air like he was celebrating a touchdown at a football game. Sarah giggled, wriggling against her pillows until she worked herself into a rather squished sitting position.

"Found it," he declared and passed the paper to her with a wink. "Here you go, my mini Monet." Someone had written on it with blue crayon in a sloppy, confused script that telegraphed childhood loud and clear. Derek squinted, trying to make sense of the upside-down, disoriented letters when Sarah suddenly thrust it upward, nearly taking off his nose with the corner.

He flipped her chart shut and backed up a little to save his nose. "Is this for me?" he asked.

"I made it," announced Sarah by way of answer, still holding the folded paper out. Derek took it from her and studied the script. _Dr. Shepurd _was scrawled across the page in big wobbly letters, complete with a backwards E, and beneath it was written _Sarah_, clearly lettered with a bit more confidence. "We both have S," she told him proudly.

"We do," agreed Derek.

"Mommy said to do D and R and a dot to spell doctor," continued Sarah, her smile morphing into a look of consternation. "But I think she's wrong because that makes 'ddrrrrruh…' You could fix it, but don't tell her, 'kay?"

"Okay," he said, managing a genuine grin for the first time that day. "I won't say a word." Sarah's smile returned in all its dimpled, baby toothed glory, and he found himself filled with a sudden longing to see his nieces and nephews. It felt like a lifetime since he'd received a handmade present like this. "Can I open it now?" he asked, a little surprised at his own eagerness.

"Yes," said Sarah seriously. He unfolded the paper. It had been halved and quartered, but soon it was spreading out open in his palms like petals unfurling on a flower. He stared down at the wild twists and scribbles of blue.

"It's the ocean," he said, recognizing the picture as the one she'd been working on in the morning.

"It's for you to have it."

"Thank you. It's beautiful coloring," said Derek. "I know just where I'm going to put it too." He smoothed out the creases in the page and unzipped his briefcase, slipping the drawing safely inside. He glanced up at Mike and tilted his head towards the open door. "Sarah, I need to talk to your dad for a moment, okay? Maybe you could try to get some more sleep."

Sarah sunk deep into her pillow at that, eyelids drooping right away as if they'd just been waiting for permission. The powerful cocktail of antiepileptics he'd put her on came paired with a heavy side of drowsiness and fatigue. She looked up at Mike, her mouth opening in a great, gaping yawn that didn't match her baby teeth.

"I'll be just outside," he said.

"Re-tuck me first, Daddy?" she mumbled.

Derek meant to wait in the hall but found his feet holding him hostage, stuck in the doorway as Mike snuggled his daughter up to her chin in blankets. "Tuck, tuck, tuck," he growled, kissing her cheek, her nose and then her other cheek in quick succession to match his words. "Goodnight, Sarah-bear."

"And goodnight, Smelly," added Sarah, speaking around another yawn as she pushed her stuffed bear's face towards his mouth.

"And goodnight, Smelly," agreed Mike, kissing the bear as well. Derek grinned despite himself. Smelly. Interesting name for a bear. Sarah sighed and closed her eyes, apparently satisfied. Mike pressed his lips to her forehead one last time and her tiny hand lifted up to touch his cheek. Derek forced his feet to move at that, blinking as he stepped out into the bright white of the hall.

He couldn't be jealous of the man with the dying child.

Mike joined him a moment later, already stripped of the steady cheerfulness he'd managed for Sarah. His shoulders sagged, and the cheap overhead lighting did nothing to hide the dark circles under his eyes. Of the two of them, Mike was taller by a good four inches, but he stared at Derek with all the uncertainty of a lost child looking up at an adult. "Is it bad?" he asked in a hoarse voice. "The seizures have stopped. That's gotta be good, right?"

"The seizures have stopped for now, yes, but Sarah has proven very difficult to treat with antiepileptics," said Derek.

"You could stop them again though, right?" pleaded Mike. "'Cause I was thinking, maybe we could push the surgery a day or two? Give us a little more time with her?" His voice cracked but he turned it into a cough.

"I'm sorry," said Derek, and the dull light of resignation crept back into the other man's eyes like scum coating a precious stone. "She's scheduled for the morning, and, given the severity of her seizures, there's real danger in delaying longer than that."

"You mean the seizures could kill her? Before the tumor?"

"The seizures are a symptom of the tumor," reminded Derek gently. "But, yes. They could kill her."

"Okay," said Mike. "Okay, okay," he repeated to himself, quiet and forlorn. "Surgery tomorrow. Do you think—" He stopped short at the sound of footsteps ringing loudly in the empty hall. Olivia rounded the corner, a Styrofoam cup in each hand. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy, and she'd pulled her hair up into some sort of disheveled mound of curls at the top of her head. She looked like a wreck, but she smiled at the both of them.

"Vending machine coffee," she said, wrinkling her nose and holding out one of the cups to Mike. "Tastes like shit, but it was all I could find. That little stand's closed up shop for the night."

Mike frowned and took a sip, nodding in agreement. "Sarah's having the surgery tomorrow," he muttered.

"Oh…" Her voice quavered as if debating whether or not to devolve into a sob before straightening out into something solid. "Alright." Her lower lip trembled and she clamped down on it with her teeth in a way that reminded Derek of Meredith. She turned to him, hesitant and hopeful, saying, "And you've done this before. You can save her with this?"

"Sarah's the fourteenth patient to have this surgery," said Derek. He looked through the slats in the blinds, finding her asleep with her bear in her arms. "There are always…" Risks. She could die. He could kill her. His cheek tingled as if a little hand had pressed against it, tiny and ineffectual, and he glanced back at Sarah as his heart tore. She could live. He could save her. "The treatment's been a success before. There's no reason why it shouldn't work," he said, but his tongue felt as rough as sandpaper in his mouth. Lies. He didn't know. He couldn't promise, but the promise came all the same. "This will save her," he said.

"Okay," said Olivia, blinking tears out of her eyes. "Good. Thank you. Thank you so much." She grabbed her husband's hand and squeezed it. "See? There's hope. We don't need to tell her because there is _still_ hope. Dr. Shepherd's going to save her." Mike just nodded and tugged on her hand, pulling her close.

Derek stared at Sarah, small and perfect even in sleep. She drew him the ocean. He would save her.

"Oh, I met your girlfriend today, Dr. Shepherd," continued Olivia, jerking his attention back from the window. She was finally smiling a real smile, one that made it to her eyes and lit them up like diamonds.

He gaped at her. "Meredith?" he stammered. "You met Meredith?"

"Yes. She's very kind. Beautiful too of course, but very kind. "

"She is," he said, too stunned to do much more than agree. His brow dragged down into a frown and his mind turned circles inside his head. What? Where? How?

"And she gave you a glowing recommendation," continued Olivia warmly.

"Oh…" said Derek. "I, that's…" _What?_ "Nice of her," he choked out at last.

Olivia nodded as if his words were coherent. As if he made some kind of sense. Meredith knew Olivia. What? Where? Meredith had met the family of his clinical trial patient. How? "Tell her thank you for me, would you?" asked Olivia. "I was so scattered I can't remember if I said anything at all, and she was so kind."

"Okay," he said slowly, still at a loss. "I can do that."

The rest of their conversation passed him by like the blurred landscape glimpsed through a car window on a highway. Hints of color, shapeless and spreading. Meredith knew Olivia and talked about him with her. Glowing recommendations seemed incongruous with anger. Hope surged through him and he hurried to say goodbye. She would be waiting.

Derek's good mood lasted until he unlocked the front door, but he knew the house was empty by the time he'd stepped inside and shucked off his shoes. The rooms felt hollow like bones with all the marrow sucked out.

No Meredith.

Her absence assaulted him, slapping like a cold wind across his cheeks. He wandered through their silent home, doling out explanations and excuses to the empty spaces. Consolation prizes. He tried not to care, but his shoulders sagged all the same. It wasn't really late enough to worry yet. Just late enough that it annoyed him in a vague, troubled way. Maybe she'd stayed late. Found her way into some surgery after all. Maybe whatever words she'd said to Olivia didn't mean a thing, and they were still screaming at each other in the on-call room.

Derek sat down in his study and dug out the paperwork he'd brought home. Sarah's waxy blue ocean slipped from the pile and fluttered to the ground, a lively swatch of color against all the dusty boxes still littering the room. Ellis's things. He shared his study with a ghost. He picked it up, his fingers moving as delicately as they did in surgery, as if he went to touch a nerve, not a scrap of paper. His desk was still undecorated, but he set the ocean there behind his laptop, pinning it to the wall with a mug he'd commandeered from the kitchen to house his pens. All the blue was beautiful to look at. Sarah had used a deep, vibrant shade. Not quite indigo, but close enough. It helped with the ghosts and the hollow silence, and he stared at it for a long time as his thoughts degenerated into a slippery wash of feelings. Sarah. Meredith. The water. The future. He wanted her home already.

When he turned back to his paperwork it was to kill the urge to call her. If she wasn't home, she obviously wanted her space. To lick her wounds. To avoid. To…whatever it was she doing. He started reading and tried not to mind. There was no keeping her safe if she wouldn't let him. He'd made a decent dent in his paperwork when he heard a car pull up out front. Someone cut the engine and then one, two, three doors all slammed in quick succession. He heard the muffled sounds of voices, a man's and a woman's. Alex and Izzie, he'd guess. A laugh he recognized as Meredith's cut clear above the others like the toll of a bell, and Derek let out a breath he hadn't meant to hold. She was home. He leaned back in his chair enough to catch sight of the front door as it swung open.

The three of them came shuffling in at an odd angle, Alex and Meredith hooked like bookends on either side of Izzie. "Step up, Mer," he said as Izzie broke out in giggles, her head lolling onto his shoulder.

"I'm stepping," said Meredith. "I'm stepping." She sounded annoyed. "I'm not gonna trip again, and I didn't trip before. It's not my fault Izzie doesn't know how to walk straight." There was a slight lilt to her words. Not slurred, but careless. It held echoes of the way she talked when she was tipsy and wanting sex. Very, very bossy, with her hands everywhere and her mouth like a flame. Her hair was mussed and her eyes shone a little too brightly. The truth sunk in his gut, burning a bitter trail as it went down. Joe's. He should've known.

Alex slammed the door shut with his foot, and Izzie erupted in another fit of giggles, shushing him loudly. He rolled his eyes, but he did so with an indulgent smile, pulling her closer. "Hey, Shepherd," he said catching sight of the open door and the light on in the study.

Meredith had been leaning over to say something to Izzie, looking happy as a freaking clam, but it all dissipated at the sound of his name. She spun around and stared straight at him, eyes wide with something he couldn't read. "Derek…" she stuttered.

Alex jerked his chin in her direction. "She's drunk. Can you take--"

"Shut up," she hissed in a voice Derek was pretty sure was meant to be a whisper but failed miserably. "I'm fine."

"I'll take care of her," he said, narrowing his eyes at Meredith. He crammed his paperwork back into his briefcase. "Thanks for getting her home."

Alex just shrugged and ruffled her hair. She scrunched up her nose, smiling for a moment. The smile disappeared as soon as she looked back at him.

"Ooh, maybe we should bake something," said Izzie dreamily, her eyes half closed. "I haven't made anything in a while. Would anybody like some muffins? I'm a good baker!"

"No baking," said Meredith. She turned to face the couple, hands landing square on her hips. "You guys have to go upstairs. Derek and I need to talk."

Derek blinked, staring at her back. He hadn't expected that. He'd figured he'd have to help her climb the stairs without killing herself and that would be the extent of their interaction for the evening. That she'd immediately play the too tipsy to talk card. Or the let's have drunken sex card. Both, maybe. They weren't mutually exclusive by any means. He scrutinized her back, trying to guess just how much she'd had from the way she was standing. Definitely not as much as Izzie, who'd already begun moaning in protest. Apparently being banished upstairs without the chance to make so much as a single batch of baked goods was a fate worse than death. He couldn't recall ever seeing her so out of it before, but then he never really drank with Izzie Stevens. That was Meredith's thing, not his. At least whatever they'd got up to at Joe's had clearly been a group effort and not a return to Meredith drowning her sorrows in a shot glass.

Alex looked over with an apologetic frown. "Come on," he coaxed, gripping Izzie's hips to steady her. "You know what's better than muffins?" He spoke in a low voice and hooked his thumbs through the belt loops on her jeans. "Bed, Iz. You wanna go to bed?"

"Mmm," said Izzie, biting her bottom lip as she caught on. He tugged her closer. "I wanna go to bed," she decided on another giggle, bright and bubbly and effervescent. Alex just grinned, looking at her like she was the sun and the moon herself.

Meredith shooed at them with her hands. "Good. Go. Get naked. Just don't be too loud."

They were barely out of the doorway when Izzie twisted around to make a face at her. "Pot meet kettle," she said in a snit before dissolving into more giggles. She stumbled towards Alex and let him drag her away.

A door slammed somewhere on the second floor, plunging the downstairs into silence. The air seemed to chill and the space between them became a thing itself. Something crackling and alive, separating them as Meredith turned around. She drummed her fingers against the doorjamb as if playing a frenetic piano piece across the wood. Tension hummed like plucked strings. The silence roared. He wouldn't break it first.

"She has the next two days off," blurted Meredith at last. Awkward and apologetic, gaining speed with every word. "Which, you know, basically never happens. And Alex doesn't have to go in until noon tomorrow. That's why she was so, well…you saw her. Loud. And drunk. Very drunk." As if Izzie was the problem. As if he gave a damn how much Izzie drank or didn't drink or giggled. Meredith scrunched up her face and grimaced in apology. "Sorry. Loud and drunk don't mix so well with the whole 'I'm in my study being studious' thing, which you're very clearly doing. And I should…let you do that," she stammered uncertainly. "Do you want me to let…" She trailed off as Derek stood up. His chair rolled back a few inches, and the whir of the little plastic wheels was the only sound in the room. She looked up at him, a soft, confused frown slathered across her face.

"Come on," he muttered, tilting his head towards the open door.

She pushed her hair back from her face, the dirty blonde strands pouring like a waterfall over her shoulders. "What? Where are we going?"

Derek said nothing as he walked to the kitchen. She trailed after him, her boots clop-clopping against the hardwood floor. The room was dark and still, soothing to the frustration that was tightening inside him like a screw burrowing deep into his skull. Or a burr hole he could feel. The refrigerator was humming faintly, and he could make out a precarious tower of clean dishes stacked haphazardly in the drain board. He sucked in a breath, trying to think, but a thud interrupted the silence and Meredith squeaked.

"Ow," she cried. "Shit. Oww…" He turned around to find her rubbing her hip with the palm of her hand.

"What?"

"Table," said Meredith, glaring at the offending object as she continued to rub her hipbone.

He sighed heavily. "Sit down, Meredith." She sunk into a chair without protest, twining her legs around it. She propped her chin up with one hand and leaned forward, staring mutely at the tabletop. He hit the lights, flooding the kitchen with warmth, a soft yellow glow to chase out the shadows. Everything they'd shouted at each other earlier had returned to circle in the air like a buzzing swarm of gnats he couldn't swipe away, and he let the cabinet door slam when he went to pull out a glass tumbler and a bottle of aspirin. She flinched at the sound but said nothing. He filled the glass with water and set it down with a heavy thunk, slapping two aspirin next to it on the table in a gesture that crept close to angry. Meredith looked from him to the aspirin and then back again. She rolled her eyes.

"I'm fine," she said. "I didn't even drink that much." He just stared at her, the little screws of frustration twisting tightly. Tighter like a headache. Tighter. Sometimes he didn't understand her at all. "Fine," she said again, giving him a look that made it clear just how much she was humoring him. She snatched up the pills and washed them down with a sip from the water glass. "You're home," she added as he sunk down into the chair across from hers. She sounded petulant and stubborn and almost a little annoyed by his presence.

"I am," he agreed.

"I didn't think you would be," she said quietly.

Derek frowned at her admission. He had no idea what to make of that. He finally settled on a terse "Why?"

Meredith just shrugged, staring down at the tumbler. She traced the rim with her fingertip, round and round and round. "I thought you were doing the thing," she said. He tried to translate that into something that made sense but came up short. He had no clue if it was a drunk thing or just a product of normal Meredith-speak, which admittedly often left a lot to be deciphered.

"How much did you drink?" he asked.

She shook her head. "Not that much." She really didn't seem to be much past tipsy, although even that took quite a lot more than her size would suggest. He harbored a sneaking suspicion that, if ever actually put to the test, his tiny slip of a girlfriend could drink him under the table without a second thought. "Besides, it's not like I drove or anything," she huffed when he stayed silent. All traces of the flushed, teasing version of herself she'd been when she'd came in with her friends had vanished and instead she sat perfectly still, avoiding his eyes. He couldn't tell if she was sulking or just feeling uncomfortable or what, but it was taking the last thin threads of his patience and snapping them one by one.

"Right," he said. His voice was clipped and he knew he sounded cross, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

She glanced at him again, this time out of the corner of her eye, quick and fleeting. Fast enough he almost missed it entirely. "You're mad," she observed in a tone so strangely conversational that, if he hadn't already known she'd been drinking, he would've with that. "At me," she continued. "Mad at me. Mad."

"I'm not mad."

"Oh, no. You're mad," insisted Meredith. At least she was an astute drunk. He had to give her that.

He slapped his hand down against the table, giving up what little was left of the charade. "Joe's, Meredith?" he said, his tone creep, creep, creeping down towards something angry. "That was honestly the best solution you could come up with for everything that happened today?"

"It wasn't a solution."

Derek snorted. "Obviously."

"No, hey," she said abruptly. "I came home. After work, I came home to talk to you, so we could do this…thing. Whatever you call it after you fight. The whole reconcile-y thing."

He smiled despite himself. She'd come home. She hadn't fled straight to Joe's after all. "Reconcile-y?" he asked. "That's not even a word."

She just pointed an accusing finger at him as if he was in trouble for wanting to use words that could actually be found in dictionaries. "I'm talking," she said. "You didn't come home. And you didn't call me. _And _you'd been all shouty and upset. I didn't want to have to watch you do the thing."

"The thing?" he echoed. He pinched the bridge of his nose, too tired from the day to bother with guessing. "Translate that for me," he said. Meredith looked down at the table and mumbled something unintelligible.

"What?"

"The not showing up thing!" she snapped, suddenly meeting his eyes again.

"You trust me that little?" he asked in astonishment as what little happiness he'd manage to scrape together at the thought of her coming home to talk quickly bled away. She knew what his job was like. She worked the exact same unpredictable hours. She couldn't really believe that one fight was enough to send him running. Of the two of them, _she _was the flighty one. Not him.

Meredith looked at him and then away and kept on talking as if that would make the question disappear. "And you're not the only person," she said. "You're not the only person I've been fighting with. Because apparently if I'm going to argue with someone I have to argue with everyone, and I…I wanted to fix things. With us. I did. I _do _want to fix things. I wasn't trying to be an avoider, but then you weren't here, and Cristina called and I thought I could at least maybe fix that."

Derek straightened up, his mouth gaping open. "You and Cristina are fighting?" he asked, quiet and disbelieving. He'd completely missed that.

"Yes," said Meredith as she pondered the mysteries of the tabletop and the salt and pepper shakers. "Maybe. Sort of." She moaned and buried her head in her hands, sounding very morose. "It's on and off. One minute we're okay and the next we're snapping at each other again, and it's stupid. I don't know…" She lifted her head from her hands and fixed him with a watery stare. "But I wasn't avoiding."

"Okay," he said gently as the bulk of his tightly screwed frustration started to loosen. She looked heartbroken. "I should've let you know I'd be late. You deserve that." He picked up her hand, curling his fingers over hers. "You and Cristina will figure things out," he added. Meredith just shook her head, chewing nervously on her lower lip. "Joe's couldn't have been that bad. The three of you seemed pretty happy when you came in."

"Oh, it was fine," she said in a bitter voice. "Cristina was fine. I was fine. It's all perfectly fine so long as we talk about nothing that matters."

He knew the feeling all too well. It summed up life with Meredith, or life with her the way it used to be, before she'd built a house of candles and slowly started spilling her secrets one by one. It still lingered though in little ways like an old pattern that was hard to forget. They were good when he didn't push. When he didn't ask too often for the things that mattered. Patience came hand in hand with loving her. Derek brushed his lips over her knuckles, trying to soothe her, but his stomach grumbled loudly and disturbed the silence.

The corners of Meredith's mouth turned up into a reluctant smile. "Hungry?" she asked.

"Yeah, actually," he admitted, only just realizing it himself. Lunch had been a long time ago. Dinner had gotten swallowed up and forgotten by the sudden need to fit three weeks of prep work for the clinical trial into a single evening. "Have you eaten?"

"I had a lot of peanuts," she said with a shrug.

He gave in and laughed out loud at that. "You have to be the only person in the entire Pacific Northwest who counts bar nuts and tequila as a meal."

"It wasn't a meal," snapped Meredith, but there was a hint of something lighter in her tone and he savored it. "It was a snack. A perfectly acceptable snack."

"Mmhmm," said Derek. "You also think cold pizza makes an acceptable breakfast. Where you come up with your wildly incorrect perceptions about food, I'll never know."

She laughed, looking at him with a smile as tentative as it was bright. He had one too, a shy, pleading smile tucked away somewhere deep inside him. It was strange to laugh after spending the whole day angry and hurt, but it suddenly felt as necessary as oxygen. The line they walked was a fragile one all gossamer and glass, their feet enough to shatter it with a single misstep, but it didn't matter. He wanted to see her smile and forget that she'd died for awhile. He wanted a moment before they had to start sorting through the wreckage to just remember that he loved her.

He slapped his hands against the table and stood up. "What are you in the mood for?" he asked.

Meredith beamed at him. "You're cooking?"

"Yep. Any requests?" He opened the fridge and bent to examine it. Alex and Meredith could be counted on to come home from the grocery store with a steady supply of things like beer and microwave popcorn and stuff for sandwiches. Basic staples. They knew to get those. She was actually pretty good at always grabbing a box or two of his Muesli as well. But actual raw ingredients that could be assembled into a meal only ever seemed to make it into the fridge when he or Izzie put them there. By the looks of things, he needed to stop at the store again as soon as possible.

"I'm surprised you're even asking," said Meredith. "Seeing as I apparently have no concept of what constitutes food."

"Well then consider this your education. Breakfast or dinner?"

"Mmm… Breakfast," she decided after a long moment of what appeared to be extremely careful deliberation. She licked her lips. "I'm feeling pretty breakfasty. Oh!" she added with a wicked grin. "Can you make French toast?"

Derek chuckled and started checking for ingredients. They had eggs and bread. The milk was getting low, but he was pretty sure there was enough for a batch. Assuming it hadn't spoiled. He pulled out the carton and gave it a cautious sniff. "Sure," he decided, reaching behind him to set it on the center island. The bread and eggs joined it next, quickly followed by a tub of butter.

"Wait, you're actually going to make French toast?" asked Meredith. "Seriously? You, Mr. Health Nut, are going to make French toast?"

He smiled and rolled up his sleeves. "I'm being generous. Besides, so long as you don't drown the whole thing in syrup and whipped cream it's not too bad."

"But that's the only way it tastes good!"

"Mmm," said Derek. "You keep telling yourself that." He walked backwards to the sink, keeping his eyes on her, savoring the normalcy of the moment. It really would be so easy to just slip back into being fine and let everything they'd fought about fall by the wayside. Meredith wouldn't care. Hell, it was the sort of solution she tended to encourage. He squirted a dollop of soap into his hands and turned on the faucet, working them into a foamy, dripping mess. The water rushed through his fingers, pounding against the basin, roaring loud in his ears like a warning. Like the sound of a train rushing ever closer. If they didn't talk, everything would fester. That train would hit them. It would be the same as leaving her in the water to drown. He sighed, trying to stave off the sudden crush of exhaustion; he was going to have to find it in him to drive the conversation, to be the one who made her smile disappear.

"I'll help," she said.

"Huh?" Derek glanced over his shoulder as he reached for a towel. Meredith had gotten up and stood with the loaf of bread in her hands, studying it with all the careful attention she'd give an open brain in surgery.

"I'll help," she repeated. "With the cooking."

"Nope." He shook his head and smiled, clinging to normalcy for a moment more. "You can watch. You're still too drunk to come near the stove, and even if you weren't, I know how dangerous you are in the kitchen," he said with a wink. "We don't have enough eggs for a do-over."

"Now that was just mean," said Meredith, but she sat down again with a smile on her face and the kitchen was warm for a few minutes more. They fell silent as Derek cracked first one egg then a second and a third into a bowl, pitching the shells and the empty carton into the trash. The silence grew and twisted as he worked, mutating into something less cheery. Less flirty. Bantering was their thing. It usually came as naturally as breathing in, but the weight of the day kept pressing against the tip of his tongue. It was a heavy thing that he couldn't push away no matter how much he focused on her smile. Flirting began to feel impossibly incongruous and wrong like a favorite song played on an out of tune piano. He finished whisking the eggs and glanced over at Meredith. Her smile had faded and her eyes were solemn as if she'd sensed his change in mood.

He poured the milk in with the eggs, searching for a way to start. "Meredith," he said at last, his voice quiet and tentative.

"Yeah?"

"We should talk about this," he said. She lifted her head from her knees and nodded. This. No clarification necessary. This thing they'd done to each other.

"Yeah," she breathed, soft as a whisper. "Yeah, I guess we should." The tip of her tongue traced along her lower lip and her hands clenched, gripping her legs tightly as if to ground herself.

He scrambled for something to say that wouldn't sound like an accusation. He'd already yelled more than enough. "Um, earlier," he began. "When you said you didn't think I was going to come home, did you mean that?"

"Oh… I was, I didn't," stammered Meredith. Her cheeks flushed and she stared at her lap. "A little. Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"Yeah," she said quietly. "I meant it."

"But why?" asked Derek. He frowned and submerged the first piece of bread into the batter, poking at it with the fork a little harder than necessary. "You don't trust me?"

"I do," she said. "I'm trying to, and I _do_ ninety-nine percent of the time, but…" She picked up the salt shaker and rolled it in her hands. "You said I have a history, only it's not just me. You have one too."

"I had a patient," said Derek defensively. "I was always going to come home, I just had a patient."

Meredith rolled her eyes. "Your clinical trial patient?"

He flopped the bread down on the griddle, and the sizzle it made was loud in the sudden silence. "Yeah," he muttered.

"Okay. Fine. Good to know." Each word was short and tense, jabbing at him like a bird pecking a worm.

Derek sighed as he added the next slice of bread to the batter. "Mer, about the trial…"

She met his eyes again, little flecks of stormy gray visible beneath the green. "I don't want to talk about the trial anymore," she said flatly.

He nodded and returned his attention to the French toast, arranging all four slices neatly on the griddle. They sizzled and started to scent the air, but it did nothing to distract from the tension that cut through the room, sharp as a ten blade. Meredith was staring at the far wall, her head turned away from him and her hair curtaining her face. He thought of Sarah and frowned.

"Olivia wanted me to tell you thank you," he said, watching with some satisfaction as her attention snapped back to him like a rubber band.

"What?" she asked, her mouth falling open. The salt shaker slipped out of her grasp and rolled along the tabletop, coming to a halt dangerously close to the edge.

"I didn't realize you knew her."

"I… I don't. I met her today. In a closet," stammered Meredith defensively. Her cheeks flushed a rosy pink and she clasped her hands together, wringing the life from them. "A supply closet," she clarified. "She was in there and she was sad and crying, and that was all. I just talked to her. I wasn't stalking the trial or trying to make you put me on the case or whatever."

He hesitated, feeling a sudden crush of guilt. This was their trial. She was supposed to know the family. She was supposed to help him save Sarah. "I wasn't accusing you of anything," he said quietly. "She said you were very kind and asked me to thank you. That's all."

She looked up at him, her lips a thin line of disbelief. "Fine," she said. "Okay then."

"Mer, about the surgery," he tried again. "I know you're upset with me."

"Honestly, at this point, I don't even want on the case," said Meredith. "So just save it. Whatever you're about to say, don't bother."

"I never meant to hurt you with this," he said.

"Well you did."

"Meredith, please…"

She stood up, her chair making angry, squealing sounds as she pushed it back from the table. Derek watched as she stalked over to the cabinets and started setting the table with all the force of a minor earthquake. Plates clattered and banged. Forks and knives came down like boulders. When she finished, she stood with her back to him, surveying her work. The sudden stillness was dizzying.

"Burke used to do it too," she said quietly. "To Cristina."

"What?"

Meredith turned around and met his eyes. "Cristina said he'd take away surgery when he thought she was being a bad girlfriend."

He frowned and raked a hand back through his hair. Maybe this was what they'd fought about at Joe's. Cristina was certainly never one to do him any favors. Never gave him the benefit of the doubt.

"You never used to do it to me though," she said.

Derek set the spatula aside and turned the flame down low on the stove. "I wasn't trying to punish you," he said, walking over to her. "And I certainly don't think you're a bad girlfriend." Meredith just rolled her eyes. "I don't," he insisted. "This is nothing like Burke and Cristina. I did it because it was the only way I could think of to help you."

She nodded and looked up at the ceiling, blinking rapidly. "Right. Because I'm too screwed up to operate. I remember."

"I just want you to be okay," he said in a hoarse voice. "That's the only thing I want."

"Right." They stared at each other in silence, the air thick between them. She'd drowned. On purpose. She'd drowned herself. There was no way she could be okay. He opened his mouth to say so, but Meredith beat him to it. "The French toast's gonna burn," she said flatly.

"Yeah," muttered Derek. He walked back to the stove, no longer remotely hungry. The French toast looked perfect and golden brown, but when they sat down to eat, the bread stuck in his throat. Meredith smothered her pieces in a sticky sea of syrup, and her silence sawed away at him like her knife to the bread, cutting off little pieces one by one.

"I'm sorry," she said abruptly, suddenly, when he was halfway through another tasteless bite. She set down her fork, and the tiny clink it made as it settled against the plate was as loud and jarring as the crash of cymbals in the silent kitchen.

Derek blinked at her. "What?"

"I'm sorry," she repeated with a little more confidence. "You're worried, and I should… I'm trying to be more, it's just…" She paused and looked at him, her eyes an unreadable storm of green and gray. "You don't need to be so worried," she said in a strange, blunt voice.

He pushed his plate away. "You died, Meredith."

"Yeah. I did."

"You _wanted_ to die."

"Only for a moment," she whispered.

"That's all it takes," he said. That was all it ever took. One moment for Meredith to decide she wasn't going to swim. One moment where his dad said he wasn't giving up his watch. One moment to squeeze the trigger on a gun. The second hand ticked once and another person was on their way to dead. It was all a great big game of Russian roulette, and it was bad enough when fate or chance or whatever the hell it was pulled the trigger.

It was unbearable when Meredith did it herself.

"Derek?" she said tentatively.

He shook his head. "I've never told you how my dad died."

"No. You never have."

Derek pressed his palm flat against the tabletop, suddenly craving the texture. Smooth and sturdy and unshakable. A nice change to the bitter seasickness that still churned deep in his gut whenever he thought about his dad's death. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, Meredith was watching him. Her expression had softened into something he could read again, gentle and patient, waiting for him.

"He was murdered," he said. "Shot in the head." The words were horrible to say, filling his mouth with a taste like sucking on pennies. "Two guys wanted his watch and he refused to give it up, so they shot him for it."

"I'm sorry," murmured Meredith. She laid her hand over his and wove their fingers together, warmth spreading through him from her touch. "I can't even… That must've been horrible for you."

"Yeah." He shrugged and stared at a stain on the wood, half hidden by their hands. Someone had spilled something. Something dark. Maybe wine. Meredith gripped his fingers tighter. "I woke up one morning and I had a dad, but by the time night rolled around, I didn't anymore. He wasn't sick. He wasn't old." Derek brought their clasped hands to his mouth, pressing his lips against her knuckles and breathing in. "He was just gone one day with no goodbyes."

"I'm sorry," she said again, soft and genuine like she meant it. Like she'd give him his dad back if she only could. She scooted her chair closer to him and he breathed against her skin.

"For the longest time, that was the worst day of my life," said Derek. "It was like someone had shoved a vacuum down my throat and sucked my heart right out of my chest. Just left me to walk around with this gaping hole in its place. I thought I could never feel anything worse than that, but then you…" His voice broke and he hesitated, forcing a breath into his lungs. "You died, Meredith. You died and now I have a whole new worst day of my life."

"I came back," she said quietly.

Derek nodded, still staring at the table. "You came back," he agreed. "But I still remember how it felt, how it…" The horror that had been trying to breathe in a world that didn't have her in it washed over him again, and he tightened his grip on her hand. It kept him sane; her flesh was warm and alive, squeezing back. "I can live with the memory of that," he said, his voice growing hoarse. "But life steals away the people you love fast enough as it is, and I _cannot_ live thinking that you could do something like that to yourself again."

"I won't," she said in a tiny, tremulous voice.

"You won't?" He looked up to find her eyes shining, swimming beneath a film of unshed tears.

Meredith's chin trembled, a sure sign that she was holding back bigger, louder tears, keeping them stuffed somewhere inside herself. She shook her head. "I went to therapy," she whispered.

He just stared at her in shock. "What?"

"I went to therapy," she repeated as the first of the tears escaped to race in thin tracks down her cheeks. The trembling in her chin seemed to spread and manifest itself in her shoulders as well. "And I didn't tell you because psych is crap and I'm not crazy, but I went."

"Therapy," said Derek, still stunned. "You?"

"Yes." She sniffled indignantly. "I got all whole and healed, remember? I wasn't just making crap up when I said that."

He came to his senses then, scooting his chair over until it was touching hers. "I remember," he said as he brushed the teardrops from her cheeks. It cut at his heart to see her cry. He wrapped an arm around her, pulling her against his chest. "That's good, Mer," he said softly, soothing his hands over her back. "That's really good."

She turned into him, burying her face in his shirt and balling the fabric up in her fists. "Yeah," she said, her voice muffled and thin. "It was good. I just… I needed it, you know? I was pretty messed up."

He did know. There were parts of her that scared him. Really, truly scared him. He held her tighter and pressed his lips to her hair. "It helped you," he said. He wasn't sure if it was a statement or a question.

"It helped."

Derek nodded, but the memory of the previous night still tugged at him. "What about…" He hesitated, but she lifted her head from his chest, looking up expectantly. "Well, what about the shower?" he asked.

Her cheeks flushed and she pulled out of his embrace so quickly it left his arms tingling at the loss of her.

"Meredith?" he asked as concern flared through him once more, the edges tipped in fear like arrows poisoned.

She stared down at her lap, her teeth worrying at her bottom lip. "That's just me," she said at last, her voice tinged with embarrassment.

"That's just you?"

"I know it was weird," she said quickly, tumbling over her words. "And it freaked you out, and I'm sorry. But I don't bake when I'm upset. I don't…go fishing. I just, I…" She looked up at him again, her green eyes wide and open to him. Honest. "I think I'm always going to be a little weird and freaky, but I wasn't thinking about doing…that again."

"No?"

She shook her head. "I don't want to die, Derek. Not even a little bit."

"But what about your mother?" he pressed. "The diary?"

Everything about her quieted, turning thoughtful. "I don't think I'm ever going to be okaywith what happened," she said softly. "I'm not going to suddenly like to think about it or anything. But _I'm _okay. Me. I'm good. I really am."

Her honesty soothed him, and then she took his hand in hers and squeezed it. It was a flash, something beautiful, and he found that he believed her. She'd never let him know her this well before. "You're okay," he said, grinning at her. It was disconcerting. As if he'd been falling, and suddenly someone had started shoveling dirt in underneath his feet. Stopping his fall. Giving him something solid to stand on. It felt bizarre after the freefall and his knees still shook, but the feel of the ground beneath his feet was incredible.

Derek picked up his fork and skewered a bite of French toast. He was suddenly ravenous. "So, therapy…" he said.

"Yeah." Meredith snatched up her fork as well, smirking at him a little. Her eyes still shone, but not with tears. "Therapy."

-----

_So, yeah. Meredith and Derek finally get to talk about some pretty serious stuff. Like therapy. And how his dad died. And it helps them a lot. Derek, especially, being able to have something concrete from Meredith instead of just her telling him she's fine all the time. It helps him believe her. There's more to their conversation in the kitchen after the therapy revelation, but the rest of it is from Mer's POV, so it's in the next chapter. And yeah, Derek and Sarah. He's gotten very attached to the little girl to the point where he promised her parents that he would save her. This little girl who hasn't been told she's dying even though she quite possibly is. Because he's very charmed by her, and she makes him think of future kids with Meredith, and he just desperately wants to save her. And yeah, that's about it. I'd like to say something nice and insightful right about here, but I'm tired and feeling decidedly uninsightful, so…thanks for reading! Also, I wrote a post 5.16 one-shot called Porcelain Fists, so if you're interested, feel free to check that out!_


	12. Chapter 11

_So, a new chapter! And it didn't take three weeks this time!! This is a long one, but it's all MerDer. It's a bit of the calm before the storm in some ways. Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to leave such lovely feedback. I appreciate it so much. It keeps me motivated! Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the chapter!_

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Therapy. She had actually told him about therapy. Her throat had seized up around the words, but they had weaseled their way out anyway. Dr. Wyatt was one of those weighty secrets she hadn't been entirely sure he needed to know because, well…there were connotations to the whole therapy thing. She had no desire to be the one who'd flown over the cuckoo's nest in this relationship. But in between the murdered dad confession, and Derek making her breakfast for dinner, and the fact that he was sad and worried and alarmingly convinced she was going to rush headlong off the next pier she happened to meet, it had all sort of come tumbling out.

The truth was, it wasn't as bad as she'd been expecting. Granted, he had spent most of the day giving her a look that said in no uncertain terms, I really think you might be up for killing yourself, so anything was bound to be an improvement. But, he was absolutely not looking at her like one who had flown over any sort of nest, cuckoo or otherwise. He looked…proud. If she had to try and characterize it that would probably be what she'd go with. His eyes were warm, the blue sparkling like water under sunlight, his mouth curving into a gentle, curious smile. All the secret sharing of the night before had freaked her out, but this was actually turning out to be pretty wonderful. It gave her a feeling like chocolate did when she took the time to let it melt in her mouth. Warm and quietly blissful.

Maybe she was just feeling what was left of her buzz now that she'd gotten over the shock of finding him at home and angry with her. It was her fault. She should've figured it out. Noticed his car. _Something_. At the very least, she could've come in looking a little bit more like a serious girlfriend ready for a serious conversation. Except two plus two didn't always end up equaling four after several rounds of tequila shots, a fight with Cristina, and then the rest of the night spent dancing superficial circles around each other. Thank god Izzie had been there too. She'd been happy to say nice things about Derek after Cristina had systematically poked holes in every little thing he'd done since she'd let him read the dead mommy diary.

It felt like a lifetime since she'd pushed it into his hands and fled, but it had barely been a day. She wasn't sure what he'd done with it afterwards. Maybe it was still waiting for her down there on the basement floor.

She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know.

The kitchen was enough of a reminder on its own. Right there was where her mother had sat, a scalpel in her hand. And under the table, just about where Derek's feet were, was where she had sat and watched the blood. She could picture it perfectly if she tried, but she stared at Derek instead. His shirt was turning his eyes almost criminally blue, and the whole five o'clock shadow thing he had going on was making her toes curl in her boots. It was just enough stubble to be sexy scratchy. Not enough to make her feel like she was being skinned alive. The diary could be wherever, and she wasn't going to care. Therapy had cured her. She was just going to sit there and ogle her gorgeous boyfriend and not think about her mother at all.

Derek rubbed his chin and frowned a little as if he was turning over some thought in his mind. Therapy questions, most likely. Perhaps he wanted to look for a loophole that left her still crazy. Whatever it was, she'd humor him; it was surprisingly easy to be an excellent girlfriend when she was feeling tipsy.

"Shoot," she said lightly, grinning around the fork lingering against her lips.

"Mmm?" said Derek. He hummed it, really. Low in his throat like maybe he was thinking about taking off her shirt. Trailing his fingers all the way down her spine.

She shivered and sat up straighter. "You have questions. Ask them."

"I have questions?" he parroted back, smirking at her. Was it bad she found him damn near irresistible when he pulled the mister smug and arrogant routine? She should've asked Dr. Wyatt about that when she had the chance.

"You do," she said. "You're looking at me like you wanna say things. Ask things. About the whole therapy whatever."

"Oh, the whole therapy whatever?" he said with a slow grin. Smug, very smug. Maybe he'd figured out it turned her on. She wouldn't put it past him.

"Yeah," she said. "That."

But then Derek nodded and shifted forward, growing serious so quickly she swore she'd flipped a switch. Exchanged Flirty Derek for Serious Derek like swapping one purse for another. "Did you…" He cleared his throat, continuing in a quieter voice. Every word was laced with caution and it made the little hairs on the back of her neck rise up as if even they took notice of the change in sound. "Mer, did you talk about your mother?"

Meredith broke away from his gaze, staring down at her plate. He really did have questions then. Hypothetical good girlfriend was a lot easier than the actual good girlfriend thing. "Yes," she said. The word felt like sandpaper to her vocal chords.

"You talked about how she tried to kill herself?" he pressed in that same steady, cautious voice.

She could feel his eyes on her, and when she looked up it was into an endless sea of concern. She could drown in there. "Yes," she said again, but she shook her head. "Except, no. I told you already. She didn't want to die." Her voice thinned out like water hitting metal, rain against the trailer.

"Meredith…" There was a touch of impatience to the way he said her name but also something sad. Almost pitying. "I don't think…"

"No," she snapped. "It's true. She told me."

"She told you that?" he said incredulously. "Your therapist?"

"Well, she made me figure it out myself as some sort of insightful journey to…" She waved her hand through the air. "Whatever. She said I was right though. My mother didn't want to die." Meredith crossed her arms over her chest and pushed her chair back, scooting away from him. She didn't want to have this argument anymore. "So, if you have such a problem with that, take it up with my shrink. My ex-shrink."

Derek shook his head. "She said you were right," he said, stretching the words out as if he didn't know what to make of them.

"She did."

She sat waiting on edge for Derek to push it further, but he just stared at her, his brow drawn down in a heavy frown. Brooding. "Okay," he said at last.

"Okay," she whispered back, quiet and uneasy. He wasn't convinced at all. That much was a given, but what did he know anyway? He operated on brains; he didn't analyze them. She scowled, but Derek gave her a brief flash of a smile and seemed to at least shrug it off. Let it go. For now.

He cleared his throat. "When did you stop going?" he asked.

"To therapy?"

"Yeah."

She smiled back at him, grateful for the slight change of subject. At least this was an easier question. "After we got back together," she said. "It just seemed like a good time, you know? I was happy." She snorted, adding, "Besides, it's not like I had to watch you be with Rose anymore."

Derek stiffened and set down his fork with the sort of precise attention he gave his scalpels. "When did you start?" he asked, his voice a fake calm that tried too hard for casual. She rolled her eyes. Leave it to him to not get her jokes; this was so not about him and Rose.

Which meant she could not tell him about the therapy tools for his tongue.

Absolutely not. No way. Never.

"You know," she muttered, pushing a soggy piece of French toast around and around her plate. Like it really needed _more _syrup on it. "After the whole relationship that wasn't went up in flames." She frowned at him. "And it wasn't just because you were with Rose," she added testily as if he'd accused her of something. "It was my mother too. I couldn't sleep and it was just a whole bad…thing."

"You couldn't sleep?"

The air seemed to tighten and she stared fixedly at her plate, finally pulling the bite of French toast up out of the syrup puddle. Sticky strands of golden brown raced from fork to plate, pulling and pulling as they stretched thin as hairs before finally popping apart. She stuffed the bite into her mouth and chewed like she was working her way through a hunk of dried meat instead of soggy bread.

"Meredith…" he pressed. His voice was anxious, like pinpricks against her skin.

She swallowed slowly and licked her lips. "Not that much, no," she said at last. She didn't like thinking back to the black hole that had been the first week after the house plans and Rose and the fight. There'd been a knot in her chest tied out of all the things he'd said that had made it impossible to get any air in. She'd spent nights in an empty bed filled with a loneliness so brutal it had sent her crawling to therapy. "I don't know," she said, stalling. "You were with Rose, and it was… It was hard, Derek. I didn't want to die alone, bitter and miserable."

"I'm sorry," he said roughly. It was a voice she couldn't interpret and she made a face.

"You're sorry?"

"You think I'd be happy I hurt you enough to need therapy?"

"It wasn't just you," she stammered. She could feel her cheeks flush, and she pushed at her hair to fight off the urge to fan her face. "It wasn't really us as the problem at all. It was everything else that kept messing up…" It was everything that hadn't wanted to let him love her. All the scared little broken bits inside her. She wondered just what therapy had done with them. Pieced them back together with lots of tape. Purged them from her completely. Stored them far, far away in some hidden Freudian space at the back of her mind she could only get at with a lot of work and a lot more self destruction.

Derek just shook his head. "You couldn't sleep," he repeated for the second time, saying the words like a death sentence.

She shrugged and stole a piece of French toast from his plate, trying to get him to smile. He didn't so much as blink. This was why she hadn't shared the therapy thing. Well, aside from not wanting to emphasize her journey over the cuckoo's nest. Things were getting weird.

"I wish you'd told me," he said when she stayed silent.

Meredith scoffed at that, setting down her fork. "Oh, really? And how would that've gone? Hey, Derek. No…wait. You were Dr. Shepherd then," she corrected. She hadn't called him Derek to his face for quite awhile there. "Dr. Shepherd, I know we aren't really speaking and you've got this shiny new girlfriend who loves white picket fences, but just thought I'd let you know I haven't slept in weeks. Uh huh. Because that's a real conversation."

"Meredith…"

"No, Derek. What?" She frowned at him and pulled her feet up onto her chair. "Do we really need to discuss this?"

"I would've cared," he insisted. "If I'd known."

She couldn't decide whether she'd rather smile or roll her eyes; his savior complex just never died. "Well now you know," she said. "I couldn't sleep. Now I can." Last night excluded, of course. She stuck her fork in her mouth, sucking the syrup from the tines and watching as his gaze flicked to her lips. "How was Rose?" she asked. If they were going to talk about back then, she at least deserved to ask some prodding questions too. Although the answers scared her a bit. Rose had probably been really good at the girlfriend thing even when she wasn't feeling tipsy.

But Derek blanched an unholy shade of pale, something better suited to a bowl of lumpy oatmeal than to his face. He blinked once, twice. A muscle in his jaw ticked. Finally he cleared his throat. "In bed?" he croaked, cringing around the words.

"What?" stammered Meredith, her fork clattering to the table. "No, no. Not…I don't want to think about you and her together. Ever. Never!" She'd already had to hear about the bad sex with the wife. There was no way she was hearing about sex with the shiny ex-girlfriend. Although hopefully that had been bad as well. She shuddered. "I meant as a girlfriend," she said. "Were you happy together?"

He let out a long breath, his whole body relaxing in the exhale. "No," he said slowly, an amused grin chasing away the lingering horror. "Not like I am with you."

"Well, what _did_ you dothen? While I was off getting all whole and healed, what were you doing?"

"I was… I don't know." He shook his head and seemed to pull into himself, staring at the tabletop with the sort of staggering intensity he usually reserved just for her. She picked at her food and waited, unsettled by his sudden change in mood. When he finally looked up again, his eyes were unreadable.

"Yeah?" she whispered, prompting him.

He smiled sadly. "I spent a lot of time pretending I didn't care she wasn't you."

Oh.

He would have something perfect to say after she'd managed to trip over her own thoughts and accidentally bring up sex with Rose.

He angled his chair towards her, scooting closer. "Look," he said. "I thought I wanted all these things." She nodded. She knew the things. Marriage. Babies. Commitment. Joint tax returns. All those forever things.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "I know." She started to look away but forced herself to hold his gaze. They still hadn't figured out a way to talk about The Things in a way that felt comfortable and natural. The Things, capital letters required. He'd made them into ultimatums outside an elevator. She'd shouted about them in a field full of candles. That was pretty much it as far as discussion of The Things went. They still tiptoed around all of it a little. Well, more than a little, but she wasn't running and in the back of her mind there was no doubt. She really did want The Things. Even with their big, scary capital letters. "You wanted things," she agreed.

"Mmm…" hummed Derek. "No. I thought I did. I wanted them so badly with you that there were days where it was all I could think about."

_You know what I talked about with the other Grey? All the things this Grey won't let me say._

She bit her lip and shifted in her chair, suddenly uncomfortable. That had been a bad day. And there had been more of them. Apparently. "I don't, I…" She had no idea what to say. Not one freaking clue. "I'm sorry," she offered.

"Meredith," he said. His voice was soft and reverent as if the sounds of her name were something holy. A long forgotten prayer. It brushed over her skin like velvet. "It's okay. I had to be with her to realize that I was wrong."

"What?" She frowned. "I don't get it."

"It wasn't the things I wanted. It was having them with you." He shook his head, smiling wryly. "Without you, they're just items on a checklist for a life that looks perfect but feels empty."

"Oh…" Meredith looked down at the table, her eyes stinging a little. Not enough to make her cry, but enough to make her wish she knew how to say something back. It always went that way though. He'd string together these beautiful thoughts, using words like they were pearls, and now that he'd stopped following them with ultimatums, it left her feeling like she was supposed to reciprocate. But the best she could come up with was a big, fat "me too," and that wasn't what was needed here.

"We don't look perfect," she heard herself say in a high thin voice that made her cringe. Great. That wasn't what was needed either. She needed a book. The idiot's guide to romantic sayings. Anything to make her a little less of a freak at this stuff.

But Derek just shrugged. "Perfect's overrated anyway," he said, and she grinned at him in relief, feeling suddenly dizzy. Light as air.

"It is," she agreed as she swiped another piece of French toast from his plate. Perfect was stupid. They didn't need perfect. _They_ had just talked about The Things. Sure, it had been almost entirely in past tense, and they hadn't actually named The Things, but it still totally counted. She hadn't freaked out once, and he hadn't so much as alluded to anything even vaguely resembling an ultimatum. "Did you see that?" she asked.

"You stealing my French toast?" said Derek. "Yeah. I saw that. How many pieces are we at now? Five? Six? I should really start keeping a tally."

"No," said Meredith with a dismissive wave of her fork. "Food thievery falls under the jurisdiction of the girlfriend, so if you wanna keep getting laid…"

He grinned wickedly, pushing his plate towards her. "Oh, now that means you'll be giving me sex tonight?"

Meredith bit down on the tines of her fork and smiled. She shrugged. "I've heard it says thank you like nothing else," she said. He chuckled and leaned towards her, sliding a hand up the side of her leg. His fingers gripped her thigh, but she pushed them away. "Finish your dinner first," she said. "We were talking."

He frowned but straightened up. "We were…"

"About things," she elaborated, gesturing wildly with her fork.

He ducked out of the way, smirking at her. "That's called conversation, Mer," he said smugly.

Meredith rolled her eyes. "I'm making a point here." Derek just settled back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest and a huge, amused grin spread from ear to ear. "We were talking about things," she said again, punctuating her words with another swing of her fork. "_Big _things."

"Mmhmm," he agreed.

"We were doing the communicating thing. Us!"

"We were," he said, and his grin softened into a genuine smile. She smiled back. He did understand then. Even if he had to be all smug and mock her for it first, he understood.

"See?" she said. "Therapy was good for me."

"Yeah," said Derek quietly. She swore she heard a hint of something proud in his voice. "Speaking of therapy," he continued after a moment. "My sister's a therapist."

She glanced up from her plate. "Huh?"

"Kathleen. I think I've mentioned her before. She's a therapist."

"Oh…"

_Psych is crap_.

She really did tell him that, didn't she?

Stupid. So stupid. He was probably going to do the whole brotherly thing now and inform her about the very important role psychiatry played in the medical community. Although she had also just credited therapy with turning her into a normal person capable of communication, and if he bothered to think, he'd realize that cancelled out the other. She cleared her throat, her gaze darting back and forth between his face and the table. "That's nice," she said lamely.

Derek shrugged. "I always used to give her a hard time about it…"

Oh thank god.

"But seeing as it helped you, I may have to let up on her," he concluded with a grin.

Something seized up inside of her, cold and panicky as visions of Derek talking to this Kathleen person filled her head. Chatting with her. He was chatty. She was probably chatty too. A whole freaking chatty family for him to chat with about his great new respect for the field of psychiatry. It'd cured his suicidal wreck of a girlfriend, after all. Didn't they know? Hadn't they heard about the slutty freak he was dating with the split ends and the tendency to drown herself in large bodies of water? "No," she croaked, giving a violent shake of her head. "Why would… Don't. They don't need to…"

Derek just stared at her, looking bewildered. "What?"

"Don't tell them," she snapped. "Nancy's already convinced I was a slutty intern. I really don't need to add crazy person to the list."

He reached over and picked up her hand in his, brushing his thumb gently over her skin. "I wasn't going to say anything," he said quietly. She frowned and stared at their hands. Right. Of course. She was the slutty, crazy intern turned resident. You didn't broadcast that. He probably found it secretly embarrassing. "Not unless you wanted me to," he continued, squeezing her hand. "I'm glad you went to therapy, but I'm certainly not going to go around sharing it if it's something you want kept private. I hope you know that."

"Okay," she said, letting her breath out in a whoosh of air. When had he gotten so good at reading the varying degrees of freaked out in her facial expressions? "Good, good…" she stammered. "Thank you." She pulled her hand from his and gripped her fork instead, her fingernails digging thin little crescents into her palm. The thought of his family had set her on edge. "Do you…tell them things?" she asked hesitantly.

"Do I tell my family things?"

Meredith nodded. "About me."

"About you?"

"Yes," she snapped. "About me, Derek. Do they know about me?"

He looked at her like she was maybe a little bit crazy again. "Of course they know about you," he said. "They know we're together."

"So they know things," she said slowly. "About me."

Derek grinned at her. "They do," he agreed. "Only secondhand though. We could always fly out there this weekend, and then they could actually know the real you."

She froze at his words. He was joking. He had to be joking. "Derek," she stammered. "It's…" Soon. Crazy. A recipe for disaster. "A lot. And we…we can't go this weekend. There's work. You have the trial! It's just…bad timing. Really bad."

His grin only widened. "I was kidding, Mer."

"You were kidding?"

"Well, I want you to meet them someday, but it doesn't need to be right now," he said. "They'd like you though," he added firmly as if this was already a fact instead of some sort of mathematical improbability. "Mom's always curious about you."

Meredith pursed her lips and nodded vigorously, trying not to freak out. Again. To re-freak. She and mothers. Not a good track record. Plus they had a habit of dying spontaneously around her. And presumably Derek liked his mother. Alive. "That's nice," she squeaked before devolving into a stammering, jittery mess of words. "But we absolutely cannot go this weekend. Even if we'd wanted to. Hypothetically. Even if she's curious." She was lucky to get her nouns and verbs in the right order. This was way too much. They'd been doing well with their roundabout discussion of The Things, but by no means did that mean they were ready to graduate to talking about The Mother. Mother Shepherd. She had to have a name, but Meredith couldn't come up with anything. She was a horrible girlfriend, really. What type of girlfriend didn't know the name of her boyfriend's mother? Easy. Newly reformed suicidal freaks who got kicked off of surgery by their boyfriends. They didn't know names. Too busy dropping kidneys and crying in showers to learn them. "Weekend…busy," she stammered, her cheeks flushing. "You can't leave the trial."

"No," agreed Derek. "I have to stay."

She sighed with relief. They weren't going. Not this weekend and hopefully not for a very long time. She started to unclench, wincing as she looked at the deep grooves her nails had dug into her palms.

"I can't leave Sarah," he said firmly. He sounded solemn, and she turned to him, finally pulling herself out of her freak out enough to notice the set of his jaw, tense, like he was clenching it.

"You can't," she agreed. Sarah. The little girl who didn't know she was dying. It left her feeling sad and uneasy and she shivered, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. "When's the surgery?"

"Tomorrow morning."

She nodded, not wanting to delve any deeper into the subject. As much as she'd liked Olivia, it hurt to think too long and too hard about the trial. It came hand in hand with a bitter torrent of things better left unexplored. But Derek sat hunched over the table, his shoulders sagging as he stared at his hands. Misery was a cloak and he wore it well.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to speak. "What is it?" she asked.

"She's so young," he said, his voice holding the echo of dried leaves and discarded things. "Six years old. Barely more than a baby."

"The treatment works," she said flatly. "Beth's alive because of it. You're not stabbing in the dark here."

Derek sighed and turned to face her. "Do you want to scrub in?"

"What?" She stared at him as the lid she'd clamped down tight over everything that hurt slowly started to untwist. She shook her head. "You kicked me off the case…"

"Clearly not one of my brighter moments," he said with a weary smile. "Scrub in with me. Please."

"I can't," she said quietly.

"Of course you can," he countered, sounding almost cross. "I want you there."

Meredith shook her head again. She felt unsettled, like they moved through a dream. "No," she said. "You don't get to take it away, and then change your mind and give it back just like that."

"But giving it back is a good thing! It was taking it away that was stupid."

"Derek, it's too late," she snapped. "I'm already getting plenty of crap from Cristina about how I get to slide right into the surgeries. I haven't done anything for this case. I'm not just waltzing into the OR because now you feel guilty for being an ass."

"Cristina," he said angrily. "What's she been saying?"

_There's no way Shepherd would slide anyone else into an entire clinical trial's worth of surgeries. _

_It's only happening because you're sleeping with him._

"Nothing." It didn't matter anyways. It all felt so incredibly hypocritical. Cristina hadn't minded at all when Burke had turned her into a mini cardio god, but Meredith scrubbing in with Derek was somehow a crime of the highest order. Of course Derek kicking her off the surgery was also somehow wrong according to Cristina's logic. She was tired of trying to figure it out. "It's stupid," she said at last. "Whatever. My point is, have fun at your surgery tomorrow."

"I'd have more fun if you were in the OR too," he said, switching tactics and grinning at her. Trying to charm her over. She looked the other way. That smile could get him a lot of things, but it wouldn't get him this. Her in the OR. That was a bad idea. Sarah was safer without her there. She wasn't half the surgeon her mother was. He had to have felt it in his gut like something undeniable or he never would have kicked her off in the first place.

"Too bad," she said lightly. "You'll just have to suffer without me."

He stared at her and she looked away towards the wall, but she felt his smile fall all the same. She didn't have one to put up in its place. She glanced down at her plate. Two bites left. Maybe she wasn't hungry anymore.

"You're still upset about this."

Her shoulders stiffened. "I'm not. I'm fine. You did what you had to do."

"You're mad at me," he insisted. "That's why you don't want to scrub in."

"That's not it," she said, shaking her head. "It's just…you kicked me off of surgery, Derek. Surgery!"

"I know," he said. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not trying to make you apologize again! I get that you're sorry, it's just…" She cut her words off abruptly and stuffed her mouth with the second to last piece of French toast. The syrup was suddenly much too sweet. It turned her stomach and left her wanting to gag. She reached for her water glass and gulped from it in huge swallows.

"It's just what?"

Meredith bit her lip. She didn't know how to explain it. It was just a feeling. Like she was hollow on the inside because everything good had already been scooped out. "I'm not my mother," she said at last.

He nodded but said nothing as if sensing that he might accidentally destroy what more was left and waiting on the tip of her tongue with so much as a single misplaced word.

She closed her eyes. "You know when I first got accepted to med school, there was a moment there where I was so convinced that I could do this. That I could be even better than my mother," she said, the words ringing loud with disbelieving laughter. "That's the only thing that would've made her proud, and for one brief, delusional moment, I actually thought I could do that. Maybe. And now… Now, I know I'm not my mother," she said quietly. "I'm no Ellis Grey. I get that, I do, but I never felt like I was _bad _at my job. It's the one thing I've always been able to do. No matter how messed up everything else got, I still had that. I wasn't a bad doctor."

"You're not a bad doctor," said Derek.

"Lately I've been feeling that way." He shook his head about to protest, but she carried on. "I dropped a kidney, Derek. I actually dropped one. On the ground. Remember that?"

"That was a freak accident," he said dismissively. "A one time thing. It could've happened to anyone."

"Right…" She stared at her plate, pushing her one remaining bite of French toast around and around her plate.

_Don't play with your food, Meredith. Who's going to want to eat with you when you look so uncivilized?_

Derek scooted closer and eased his arm in between her back and the chair, pulling her into a sideways hug. "We're not really talking about the kidney, are we?" he asked.

Meredith stiffened in his grasp and stared straight ahead. She could still see him out of the corner of her eye, an indistinct blur of Derek, dark with concern, his voice gentle with worry and love and things that meant she should confess. That she _could_ confess. To him. Even after a day of spilling just about every secret she had, it was still hard. It was still a monumental effort, like pushing a boulder up a hill with her bare hands, just to get her tongue to move, herself to speak. "I don't know," she said. Her words trembled and quaked.

"Mmm…" He hummed low in his throat like a purring cat, encouraging her to go on. "It's okay. You do know. Why do you think you're a bad doctor?"

She shook her head. The boulder was stuck and breaking her back. The words were peanut butter clinging to the roof of her mouth.

"Is it because of the trial?" he pressed, prying her out of herself bit by bit.

"I don't know!" she snapped. "It's stupid."

"No it's not."

She looked at him, her eyes wide and flooded with tears. "You didn't trust me with your patient," she blurted. Her voice was mournful and whiny. Pathetic. She hated it.

Derek's whole expression seemed to crumble. "Meredith…" He shifted even closer, his fingers curling tightly around her lower back. "I'm sorry. I want you there now," he said, sounding hopeless. "I'd take it back if I could."

"I know," she said. But it didn't take away the ache she felt when she thought about how quickly he'd kicked her off the case, how very little it had taken for him to decide she was too damaged to do her job. She sighed heavily and speared her final piece of French toast. "I'm not my mother," she said again. "The diary makes that perfectly clear. She didn't waste time running around Europe or spend entire years living off of coffee and alcohol and jars of peanut butter. By the time she was my age, she was already on her way to becoming someone."

"Don't compare yourself to her," said Derek as if it was that easy to not care. "You don't need to be identical to her to be a good surgeon."

"Right," she scoffed. She shifted in her chair, feeling overheated. Uncomfortable. "She spent her internship learning things; I spent mine unraveling. Uh huh. Clearly I'm the extraordinary one."

"There's more to life than work, Meredith, and you have her beat outside the OR every time."

Meredith snorted. "Because I've really been the picture of healthy and functional in the time you've known me." She looked down at her empty plate, frowning at the left over sticky mess. If she didn't wash the syrup off tonight, it'd be hell to get rid of come tomorrow. "I was even worse before med school," she added as she got to her feet.

Derek shook his head disbelievingly. "You're a good person. You care for your friends. You—"

"Give me your plate," she said, cutting him off. She couldn't handle much more of this.

He looked up. "Huh?"

"Your plate," she said. "You cooked. The least I can do is the dishes."

He sighed but handed it over, and she stacked the plates together, jumbling the silverware into a pile on top. She dumped everything into the sink and headed back to the center island, picking up the griddle and the bowl Derek had used for the batter as well. He frowned at her from his seat at the table. "Meredith, listen to me," he said.

"Can you put all that crap back in the fridge?"

His frown deepened, but he got to his feet and picked up the bread and the butter. The syrup bottle. She turned on the water, letting it drown out the sudden, stuffy silence. The fridge door opened and closed, and then he was standing beside her, looming over her. Radiating an all too familiar frustration.

"Mer," he tried again. Of course he would. If there was one thing Derek Shepherd didn't know, it was when to drop it. She rolled her eyes and picked up the sponge. She'd had more than enough self-analysis for the evening. Hopefully he'd get the point when she didn't answer.

They stood perfectly still for a moment, and she was painfully aware of the distance between their shoulders. The water hit the basin like thunder in a storm. A waterfall to pull them down. She should do better, but comparing herself to her mother left her raw. She squirted the dish soap onto the sponge and the spell broke. Derek sighed almost imperceptibly, she felt it more than heard it, and then he started putting away the dry dishes stacked in the drain board.

She watched him out of the corner of her eye, wondering when they'd gotten so domestic. Angrily domestic at the moment. He was letting the cabinets slam. But still… Two years ago, if someone had told her she'd be doing up dishes with her live in boyfriend after a long night of talking, she never would've believed it. One night stands had no business doing dishes. But Derek navigated her kitchen, _their _kitchen, like he'd been doing it his whole life. Not once did he stop to ask her where something went, and that wasn't just because of the tense, brooding silence they were cultivating. She wasn't sure how she'd missed the change from strange and new to completely natural. Maybe it had been something of a slow slide like growing taller. Inches added on when you weren't looking.

She could've asked Olivia if the woman hadn't been so distraught. Married with a daughter. She would've known the feeling. Maybe even had a name for it. Maybe this was how married people fought too. With slammed down cups and furiously scrubbed plates. Silences that said a lot. Olivia could've told her. She liked Olivia. "They seem like a nice family," she said, forgetting to speak over the sound of the running water.

Derek turned to look at her. "What?" he said tersely.

"Your clinical trial family," she said. "Well, I only met Olivia, but it's clear they love their daughter a lot."

"They do," said Derek as he deposited several assorted coffee mugs on their shelf. Each one was set down a lot harder than necessary, but she bit her tongue and didn't comment. "They don't deserve this," he said roughly. "They're good people."

"Yeah." Did anyone ever deserve it? "They're not telling her that she's dying," she said.

He scowled at her. "I know. She's not going to though. The treatment works."

"Right. I know it does," she said, her voice creeping towards irritated to match his. "But there are always risks, and this has huge ones. I'm just saying they're not telling her that it's even a possibility. She might as well be getting her tonsils out for all she knows! That's why Olivia was so upset when I found her," she added quietly. "I think they were fighting about it. Her and her husband."

"It's not an easy thing for a parent to have to go through," he said. She bristled at his tone. So freaking condescending. As if he was enlightening her. As if he thought she'd never have realized that on her own. "Couples that lose a child can get ripped apart."

"I know that," she snapped. She picked up the griddle and started scrubbing it violently. Some of her frustration bled away with the soap and the water. The bits of food that got washed away. "I just…" She sighed and glanced over at Derek. "What do you think about it?" she asked.

"I think it's an incredibly personal, private decision they have to make, and it's my job to respect what they choose for their family."

"Not as a doctor," she said, rolling her eyes. Again with the whole condescending thing. She could just about smack him. "I meant what do _you_ think, Derek, as a person?"

"You mean if it were our kid?" he asked flatly. He was staring straight at her like a challenge. Like revenge. Getting her back for cutting their earlier conversation off short. She bit her lip and hesitated, her sponge hovering in midair. He always knew just how to test her. Their kid. Something shot through her like electricity, painful yet thrilling.

"Yeah," she said. "Something like that." She resumed scrubbing the griddle vigorously while her teeth massacred her lip. He better not freaking misinterpret that as an invitation to procreate at any time in the foreseeable future.

There was a long pause, but when she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, his expression had softened. He wore a quiet, distant smile. "Everyone deserves the chance to say goodbye," he said at last, picking up a handful of silverware and beginning to sort it.

"You don't think it's selfish? Telling the kid just so the parents can have that moment?"

"No," he said quietly. "It's not just the parents who deserve the chance to say goodbye. You think differently?" he asked, and this time he didn't sound condescending. Just curious.

"No, no. I agree with you," said Meredith. "I'd tell her. It's just…Olivia. She's so convinced it's the wrong thing to do. That Sarah won't fight or something if she knows. And I don't think she's a bad person or unintelligent or anything. I don't even really think that she's wrong, and yet at the same time…" She shook her head, feeling troubled and trying to pinpoint why. The kitchen fell away in a flash.

_I don't wanna be here. I wanna go back. _

The room was cold and she wasn't breathing.

_We were told there wasn't a lot of time. _

Dead, dead, dead.

_I'm out of time? _

She shivered and the griddle slipped out of her grasp, clattering loudly as it resettled against the sink.

"Meredith?" said Derek, his voice hinting at worried. "You okay?"

"Slipped," she said, picking up the griddle and rinsing it off. She handed it to him. "Maybe it's right for them," she said quietly, trying to convince herself. Sarah wasn't her. She had every reason to want to fight to stay alive.

Even if she didn't know she needed to fight…

"Maybe it is," he said. He sighed and shook his head. "We don't get a say here, Mer. Even if we think we're right."

She nodded, shutting off the water. "I know," she said. The kitchen was too quiet, and she looked back at him with an exaggerated sigh, wiping her hands dry on her jeans. "Alright," she said lightly, pushing away the worry. The empty hospital that lurked at the back of her mind. "This is getting freaking morbid here. Can we talk about something else?"

Derek raked a hand back through his hair and smiled. At least they were done with the fighting. "I distinctly remember you're the one who started this whole train of thought."

She grinned at him, biting her lip. "So not my fault. I'm weird and freaky, remember? It's your job to suggest the normal topics."

"Mmm…" He stepped closer, shifting so he stood behind her. His hands gripped the counter on either side of her, and she was pinned. He nipped at her ear. "What if I like your weird and freaky?" The words were a low growl rolling over her skin. She leaned back ever so slightly. Just enough for her shoulder blades to press against his chest. The air between them was electric. Still filled with static from the fighting. From the way his breath spilled down her neck. Hot. Waiting to spark.

"What if you do?" she murmured. His fingers curled around her hipbone and she pushed back, wriggling against him. He chuckled and gripped her tighter. Possessive. She was his. He would have her. She would have him. Soon. These were facts. She did it again and his laugh turned into a moan. His hand slid across her stomach, tightening around her waist, and she could tell he was seconds from picking her up and carting her to their room. Seconds. If that. She grabbed his arm and shook her head, caught off guard by a sudden desire. "Not upstairs," she said quickly.

"Not upstairs?" he echoed, and she could hear the grin in his voice. He thumbed the waistband of her jeans before moving to pop the button. A hand slipped inside, brushing against the lace front of her panties. "What do you want, Mer?"

He toyed with the slender strings that gripped her hips. Crept infuriatingly close while giving her nothing. "Touch me," she said.

"Here?" asked Derek as he kissed his way down the side of her neck. She tilted for him. "In the kitchen?"

She'd never liked this room before. Never since…

He rubbed her slowly through the lace only to pull his hand away as she started to quiver. "Is that what you want?" he asked as his hands skated upward, taking her shirt with them. His thumbs pressed against the underwire of her bra, popping it up over the swell of her breasts.

"Yes," she moaned, but whether that was yes to the kitchen or yes to the fingers rolling her nipples between them, she couldn't remember anymore. Yes to both of them. Yes to freaking everything.

"What about Alex?" he asked, walking her away from the sink. "And Izzie?" His hand wandered down her stomach to pet her through the lace again. "They're both home."

"And dead to the world by now," she said, staggering backwards with him. Who gave a crap about roommates anyway? Roommates were stupid. He hooked a single finger under the thin strip of lace, teasing it away from her skin. God. If he'd just get rid of her panties and _touch _her already. "Besides," she said, trying like hell to make the thoughts inside her head remember how to come out as words. She had a point. She had a… He palmed her breast and hummed low in his throat. Encouraging her. "It's my house," she gasped. "And, and…" She moaned as he finally pushed her panties to the side and sought her out. His fingers delved and stroked and teased. She was shivering, delirious. Like a fever. She rocked against his hand. Whimpered. "It's my house and…"

He dragged his thumb, circling her clit. "And we're gonna fuck where you want to?" he growled.

"Yes," she said as he pulled her tighter to him. She could feel him behind her, pressing hard against her, but she couldn't reach. "Yes. God. Where I…" Her hands clenched in fists as her breath hissed past her teeth. "Fuck, Derek…" She reached up, twisting an arm behind her head, desperate to feel him. Her hand tangled in his hair, clutching at thick clumps of curls.

"Mmm…" He kissed the back of her neck, fingers dipping in and out. "You're wet, Mer. You're so wet." She moaned and shifted her hips, still tugging on his hair. He walked her further backwards, and the room seemed brilliantly lit. Every cabinet, every last plate and cup was a bright blur she didn't have to mind. She'd never liked this room much before, but she didn't care where they were going now. He could walk her to the freaking moon if he wanted. (She had no doubt he would.)

He turned her, and she pivoted around the fingers curled deep inside her. His mouth came down over hers, hot and demanding, and she sucked, pulling his tongue deep into her mouth. Derek groaned, and the sound reverberated down her throat until there was no part of her left untouched. Her fingers found the tiny buttons on his dress shirt and flew down them one by one. Surgical dexterity she thought with a distant laugh that surrendered soon to the whining, needing hunger spilling from his fingers into her.

When she broke away from his mouth, it was to plant a trail of kisses over the strip of bare skin caught between the two halves of his open shirt. The smooth plane of his chest and the swirl of dark hairs winding down. Captured there for her like a masterpiece in a gilded frame. She licked her lips and let her gaze drift lower, reaching out to cup him through his jeans. When she pushed his shirt off his shoulders, she followed the fluttering fabric down to her knees. She stared up at him as she freed him from his jeans. Hovered near him. And breathed.

"Meredith," he moaned, looking down at her with hooded eyes. "Please."

She smiled and wrapped a hand around him. Licked her way up his length, swirling her tongue before she took him in her mouth. The room seemed to pulse. His fingers tangled in her hair. She wanted him. Completely. She licked and sucked and savored every groan he made. Every sound that meant he wanted her too. After all of this, every jagged, hurtful thing they'd hurled at each other, the want was still there. It didn't die. It lived and pulsed and breathed. It was in the smell of him. The taste. It was there in the way he stroked her hair, holding it back from her face so he could see. In the way he groaned her name again and again like she was his prayer. And it was there in the way he pulled her to her feet before he finished and kissed her gently on the lips with a mumbled, "Wait. Not yet."

All of it familiar. And all of it discovered brand new again.

The wanting that pulsed deep inside her transformed into something ravenous, and she kicked her way out of her jeans and her panties. Clothes pooled on the floor forgotten. Black leather boots encased her feet and clung to her calves like a second skin. She glanced at Derek and left them on.

He unhooked her tangled bra, but she couldn't say where it fell because he dropped his head to her breasts, flicking a nipple with his tongue. His mouth closed around it and she grabbed fistfuls of his hair, holding him there while he sucked. She shivered and arched her back, pushing herself into his mouth. She was a messy pile of starving, desperate things, and she barely noticed the arm that wrapped around her waist.

The ground disappeared from beneath her feet, and he left her nipple damp and throbbing. She squeaked. The ceiling swam above her in a wash of white, and she felt something rough and sturdy beneath her back. She turned her head to the side and the napkin holder loomed like the Great Wall of China. The table then. She was lying on the table. Derek stood at the end, gripping her foot in his hand. How'd she missed that?

How?

He smirked at her boots, eyes gone dark and lustful. He looked at her like a lion stalking its prey. "These are nice," he murmured, kissing her leg where leather gave way to skin. "You should wear them…" He kissed her knee, her thigh. "To breakfast tomorrow." He spread her apart as he climbed higher on her thigh with each word. "It'd be good enough to eat." She shivered and lifted her hips, trying to get closer.

He took his time. First it was only his fingers that found her. Peeled her layers apart.

"Please," she begged. He liked that. When she begged. And it was freaking genuine anyway, so… "Derek," she moaned, thunking her head against the table. "Please, please, please."

He laughed and the sound hummed against her very center. His tongue swept against her and she swore she was dying. The world spun out in every color and none at all, and her fingers curled in his hair. She shifted her hips, trying for more. More of him. Every press of his tongue was feather light and left her even hungrier than before. His fingers coaxed and curled and played her like a harp. A violin.

God, she was an entire fucking orchestra at this point.

She shuddered and kicked out, catching the back of a chair with her boot. It fell. Clattered. Crashed to the ground. Derek looked up at the sound. Left her. "Leave it," she hissed. "Leave it. Fucking leave it." He just rested his chin against her thigh and grinned at her.

"So very bossy, Dr. Grey," he crowed. "What _am _I going to do with you?"

Anything he wanted, really.

"Just, just…please. Don't stop."

He smiled again and then the only thing she could see was the top of his head. Even that slid lazily out of focus as he licked his way through her folds and started peeling her apart again. Like an onion. Every lick, every fluttering touch, every curl of his finger and press of his thumb and another layer was gone. Gone, gone, gone. Obliterated. It was an explosion in slow motion, freeze framed into something close to insanity and all she wanted was that moment when everything blew apart and the world flared white and red. It dangled there close. Waiting for her.

Teasing her.

God, if only…

She whimpered and shifted closer. Every breath shivered out of her lungs like it was her last. She mewled and pleaded and cried his name until suddenly, he stilled.

No.

He pulled away and kissed her once. She could taste herself on his mouth. But then he was gone and she was left bereft, at a loss.

Lacking.

Her hands flailed in the air, scrambling for reason, and then flopped against the tabletop. "Finish me," she gasped, protesting, torn and disoriented. Hanging from the ledge.

He grinned at her as he pulled her legs towards the ground. The room slid. "Turn over," he said.

She laid there blinking, and he did it for her. Her heels found the ground, wobbling as he rolled her over. Her body slid against the wood. She shook.

"Derek," she whimpered.

He splayed his palm against the small of her back, pressing her flat. And then he was kissing his way up her spine, visiting every vertebra with his lips. The table slid out of focus, blurred and brown and grainy, and she shivered as he moved closer, hovering over her. His hands brushed her hair from her neck and he bent to suck on it as he pushed a leg between her thighs. Rubbed her. Nudged her. Spread her apart.

She could feel him, hard and close, more than ready. But not there. Not there. "Oh, come on," she moaned. "Please."

"You want me inside you?" he asked, his voice low and husky and ragged, shredded thin and close to cracking. He was going to kill them both with all the waiting.

"Yes," she hissed, wriggling against him. She listened to him groan and smiled into the tabletop. Two could play at torment.

But then he pushed into her and there was only a rush that had to be the world peeling back from the point where he filled her. He curled over her and into her, breathing down her spine and deep into every crack inside of her. Her breasts were mashed against the table and fingernails scratched at the finish. She could hear it shifting beneath her with every thrust, creaking in shaky protest. She gripped the edge and prayed it wouldn't break.

She gasped as he reached a hand around to flick her clit. "What do you need, Mer?" he asked, sounding strained and panting.

"Harder," she groaned. "I need… Harder."

The words were barely out before he'd grabbed her hips and complied. Started yanking her backwards with every thrust. Her vision went dusty around the edges and she surrendered to the rhythm, rocking back with his hands. Bringing him deeper. Closer. The table creaked. Their bodies slid. There was no space left inside her unexplored. Nothing untouched. He filled her and drained away. Filled her and drained away. Again and again. He grunted, shouting senseless sounds, leaving her drunk on a mess of mingled pleasure and pain. It seemed endless and ephemeral at the same time. Too soon and never until her lips curled back from her teeth and she started to shake. The room took a nosedive that left her screaming her release.

Coherency shivered away in a flash of white.

Her mind was lost somewhere along the way when bliss struck her like lighting and rippled through her veins. Her toes curled in her boots and the sound of his name skinned her throat and left her hoarse. She was barely half aware, delirious as he finished. She hung there dazed, clinging to the table as the room tried to right itself. He pumped into her again. Once. Twice. A final time and then he spilled. She heard her name on his lips and loved the sound. When he slumped forward to lay curled over her back, she'd just remembered how to breathe. He kissed her throat and the underside of her jaw. His hand found hers and their fingers locked. Their hair was damp with sweat, their skin slick. The room smelled of sex and she had the table to thank for the fact that she was still kind of upright.

She didn't know how long they stayed locked like that, half standing and bent over the table. But eventually, after what had been seconds or days, a minute or a lifetime, she nudged him with her elbow. "You're crushing me," she muttered.

"Sorry," he said softly, separating from her. She shivered and felt alone, but then he was fitting his hands under her armpits. Helping her to her feet. His pants had pooled around his ankles, and she sagged against him, still needing his hands.

"Crap," she said as her legs started to shake. Her knees felt weak. "Let's sit."

Derek chuckled but seemed as happy to give in to gravity as she was. He crumpled to the ground, holding her the whole way down. They fit beneath the table, and she curled around him, staring up. She came face to face with a sea of long forgotten scribbles. She'd drawn on the underside of the table once upon a time. The work of a blue marker and no one to play with. Her mother hadn't noticed the day she'd sat down there and tried to die.

"My art," she mumbled, jerking her chin towards it.

Derek tilted his head back and stared. He was silent for a moment, but then he nodded and kissed her hair. "Hmm… Very Picasso. It's good art."

She breathed and slumped against his chest, petting the swirls of dark hair that grew there. "It's a good table," she countered, sounding tired and sly.

He laughed. "It is."

She thought they might be telling lies, but she couldn't decide. Good table or bad. She'd been down here before. To watch the blood.

When she shivered, he just held her closer, and she looked up at the scribbles instead. It was an endless trail of meandering blue. She wondered what she'd been trying to draw.

The ocean? Or the sky?

"Come on," said Derek. He rubbed his hands up and down her arms. "Let's go to bed."

"Okay," she whispered. She let him guide her out from under the table. Away from it all. But she glanced back wondering as they gathered up their clothes.

Ocean.

Or sky.

She'd cast her vote for the one that had swallowed her whole.

-----

_So, yeah. More of the communication. This chapter had them putting a fair amount of the past to rest. As well as digging up some issues that still have a ways to go before they're resolved. Like Meredith and her mother. Derek unintentionally hurt her a lot when he kicked her off the trial. She's already been feeling like she can't compare to the surgeon her mother was, and now Derek's actions essentially said to her that he didn't trust her with his patient. And she knows he had his reasons, but what it comes down to for her was that his gut reaction was that she couldn't handle it. She wasn't a good enough doctor. And it's really eating away at her. It plays into all her insecurities about living in her mother's shadow and basically leaves her feeling like she doesn't deserve to be on the trial. Even when Derek specifically tries to get her back. In her eyes, she isn't good enough. But that doesn't stop her from being intensely interested in the case. As much as she doesn't want to dwell on the trial, she really liked Olivia and connected with her. And the fact that they aren't telling Sarah that she might die is really troubling her, but she can't exactly place a finger on the why of that. But Meredith's been dead, and her experiences from her NDE are shaping how she's viewing this whole thing. And yeah, that's about it for now. Thank you so much for reading!! _


	13. Chapter 12

_So, was Elevator Love Letter amazing or what, you guys? I'm on a MerDer high right now. Anyway, here's the next chapter! And thank you to everyone who has taken the time to leave me some feedback. I appreciate it so much.  
_

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They hadn't slept all night. He could tell with a single glance at the pair of tired, haunted faces. Sarah's room had a window facing east, and Seattle was turning red with morning. Streaks of purple and orange cut across the city, ribbons of color as vibrant as jewels against the fiery sky. Light streamed through the glass and made the room glow, but Mike and Olivia only looked more worn by comparison. Haggard in contrast to the newborn day. Derek hesitated in the doorway, his eyes full of the sunrise, wanting to find in it some emblem of hope. A token for the day. A sign that Sarah would live. But she lay listless in her bed as if the life was leaking from her like water spilling steadily from poorly cupped hands. Her eyes seemed sightless as she stared at the ceiling, for once not bothering to track his progress through the room as he went to grab her chart from the foot of the bed. Even the fingers that gripped her bear seemed weaker; she didn't cling to it the way she had the night before.

"Good morning, Sarah," Derek said quietly. The child said nothing back, and he missed her smile. The direct way she'd talked to him all the previous day, too young to make any concessions to him as a doctor.

But Olivia looked up at the sound of his voice, jarred out of contemplating her coffee cup. Her curls had turned frizzy and they stuck out at odd angles. She fussed with them for a moment before giving up with a halfhearted shrug. "Morning, Dr. Shepherd," she said, nudging her husband with an elbow. Mike had been holding an open book upside-down, sitting hunched over in a heavy stupor, apparently too tired to notice the rotated text. He closed the book and set it aside.

"Morning," he said. They offered Derek scant smiles only there for the sake of politeness.

He returned the greeting and went back to the chart in his hands. The on-call resident had updated it overnight, and he signed off on the notes when he reached the bottom. More headaches. More nausea. More fatigue. His shoulders drooped forward. At least there hadn't been a seizure. At the rate Sarah was fading, he doubted her chances of surviving another.

"She hasn't slept much," volunteered Olivia, getting to her feet. "She was throwing up most of the night. How's your tummy feeling now, baby?" she asked, pressing her hand to Sarah's forehead in an old, familiar gesture. As if it was nothing but the flu, something she'd solved countless times before with sippy-cups full of juice and favorite stories read snuggled together on the couch. Derek remembered the gesture from his own childhood, when his mother would smooth back his hair to press a firm, gentle hand against his forehead. It had never taken her more than that to ascertain whether he was faking it or not, and she would either cluck her tongue at him and tell him to finish dressing for school, or call him sweetheart and shift from touching his forehead to rubbing his back. Telling him to go back to sleep. That it was okay. That she was there. It was her hands that he remembered most as he watched Olivia's run through Sarah's hair, worrying at the messy blonde ringlets, smoothing them into some sort of order. Hands that made everything a little bit better.

He wondered who had stroked Meredith's hair. If anyone had bothered to at all.

"I'd like to go over the procedure with you," he said as he replaced Sarah's chart at the foot of her bed. "And there are some forms…" Olivia nodded, showering her silent daughter with kisses and promises that she'd be right back before heading out into the hallway. Mike and Derek followed suit, and he began his explanation as she pulled the door shut behind them.

"I'll be injecting a live virus into Sarah's brain in the area surrounding the tumor," he said. "The virus will attack the tumor, causing it to shrink." Mike and Olivia nodded along to his words, completely trusting despite their exhaustion and all their fears. Derek sighed. "This is a risky procedure. I want you to be aware of that."

Olivia gave him a watery smile. "But it works," she said. "You're one of the best." She stated it like a fact, leaving him no room to argue. He'd already promised to save their daughter's life.

"I've been successful before," agreed Derek quietly. He glanced back at Sarah, glimpsing her through the blinds, tiny and unaware. So very small. He wondered if she was afraid. Frightened by all the silence and the conversations grownups had without her. He cleared his throat, "I'm going to have one of our child life specialists stop by to explain the surgery to Sarah."

Olivia frowned. "They won't," she began, her voice anxious. "They won't say anything about…" About death. How she'd die if this wasn't done. And maybe still. Even if it was… He felt his heart twist. She wasn't his child; he had no right to decide how much she knew about her illness.

"I'll make them aware of your wishes," said Derek. "But I want someone to talk her through the basics. Anesthesia. What an OR is like. It helps the child feel more comfortable with the concept of surgery."

She relaxed at that, nodding her head. "Okay," she said. "Thank you. That sounds like a great idea. I just don't want her to be scared. She's been so quiet this morning…"

He fought back a heavy sigh. "That's to be expected with the meds she's on." And the fact that she was dying. "Excuse me," he added, more abruptly than usual. "I need to go check on some of my other patients. I'll have a resident stop by with those forms."

But Olivia reached out and grasped his hand. "Will you be back before the surgery?" she asked, looking at him like it was his presence that was keeping her daughter alive.

Derek hesitated. He usually left the majority of pre-op care to a resident and met his patients down in the OR. But Sarah lay in bed, her bear hugged to her chest. She'd drawn him the ocean. She was facing death and didn't know it. He nodded slowly, feeling weary. "Of course," he said, his voice quiet, and he left them to their daughter.

His nerves had woken him up early that morning, even before Meredith's alarm, and he'd gone into the hospital with her a good two hours before he needed to arrive. Rounding on his pre-ops and post-ops didn't take up nearly as much time as he'd hoped, and Derek found himself left with another hour to kill before Sarah's OR was free. Paperwork was out of the question; he was too nervous to focus on something so mundane. He wanted Meredith.

He wanted her voice and the quiet, gentle way she reassured him with a simple smile. He wandered the hospital, trying to talk himself out of paging her away from her work, when he found her quite by accident. She stood at the nurses' station, sorting through a heaping pile of charts. Her hair was pulled back in a sloppy bun, wisps of bangs tucked behind her ears, a few stray strands falling forward to frame her face. A pale green shirt peeked out from beneath her scrubs, and she seemed at once both fresh and tired.

"Hey," he called. She looked up and frowned.

"Hey yourself," she said. There was a bit of an edge to her voice, but what it hinted at he couldn't tell.

He sidled closer and leaned against the counter. "Wanna grab a coffee with me?" he asked hopefully. "I've got some time to kill before my first surgery."

She hummed under her breath, seeming irritated, and Derek braced himself for disappointment. Of course she was too busy. She was facing a small army of charts. However, when she spoke her voice was gentle and understanding. Completely at odds with her expression. "Sarah's surgery?"

"Yeah." Worry welled up at the sound of her name, but he shrugged and tried to shake it off. "You look busy though," he said.

"This?" said Meredith, wrinkling her nose at all the charts. She sighed and pushed them away. "_This_ can wait. We can get coffee."

He waited while she got rid of the charts, depositing a few at the nurses' station and handing the rest off to her lurking interns. She looked rather frazzled when she joined him at the elevator. "Cafeteria?" she said sharply, leaning around him to press the button.

Derek nodded, and the doors slid open almost immediately with a mechanical whoosh. Her smile was missing the whole way down, and he glanced back at her a few times as they waited in line and paid for their drinks. The line was long but almost all the tables were empty. This early in the morning, people were usually refueling after a long night on call or charging up on their way in for the long day ahead. Most paid for their coffee and walked off with brisk, hurried steps. Meredith and Derek took their time though, meandering through the maze of tables until they reached one in the farthest corner from the door. It was near silent back there. The usual sounds of the hospital faded away to distant white noise. Meredith sighed as she dropped down into a chair and propped her feet up on another. They sipped at their coffee and said nothing. They both drank it black. Coffee was one of the few things he never caught her trying to "improve" with sugar and ungodly amounts of heavily processed garbage.

She closed her eyes as she drank. A slight scowl had settled on her brow.

"You want to tell me what's wrong?" he asked.

Her eyes slit apart and she regarded him with narrow strips of pale green. Like her shirt. Derek had never told her, but it fascinated him how her eyes would chameleon from blue to green to gray, capturing every imaginable shade along the way based on what clothes she happened to put on that day. Back when they'd first gotten together, he'd often tried to guess what color would greet him when she woke up. Now, the narrowed slits of green were ones he knew well enough to tell that she was annoyed. Grumpy. At the very least, troubled by something. He frowned, trying to think back over everything that had happened that morning. She'd seemed cheerful enough when they'd parted ways in the lobby, heading to their separate locker rooms.

Meredith shrugged. "Today sucks," she said simply.

"Oh?" He raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to elaborate. When she didn't, he chanced a "Why?"

"Because…" she said, stretching the word out long enough that he was pretty sure whatever came next would be his fault. "Your bright idea to talk to Bailey yesterday got me blacklisted."

"Blacklisted?" he asked, straightening up in his chair. "What are you talking about?"

"She's being sympathetic. And friendly. And concerned. Very not Bailey."

"Mer, that's not exactly blacklisted."

Meredith just made a face. "She stuck me on discharge. All freaking day."

"Ahh…" He nodded slowly. That was worse. "Well, the offer still stands. You could always scrub in with me."

She took a sip of coffee and glared at him. "Don't push it."

"What?" Derek blinked at her in disbelief. "I'm still in the doghouse for that?"

Her glare lost some of its intensity and she shuffled her shoulders back and forth. It was enough to tell him she could be won over. Maybe. If he could manage to be charming when Sarah's surgery had him feeling like a ball of nerves.

He cleared his throat and tried anyway, asking, "You know what?"

"Hmmm?" said Meredith. She kept sipping her coffee, regarding him over the brim with narrowed eyes.

"You can't be mad at me," he declared.

She lifted her lips from the cup just far enough to speak. "Why's that?"

He shrugged as if it was simple. Hoping she'd buy it and want to smile at him some more before he had to go chop into the brain of a six year old. "We had make-up sex," he said, not bothering to lower his voice. Their section of the room was empty save for a cafeteria worker wiping down tables with a cloth several rows away. If the woman heard, she made no indication. He looked back at Meredith, smirking when he caught sight of her smile. It was a tiny one, just toying with the very corners of her mouth, but there was something impish to it. Her eyes sparked.

"Dirty kitchen make-up sex," she clarified, leaning back in her chair.

"That's what I'm saying."

She giggled softly, and the cafeteria brightened with the sound. Derek smiled at the hand she clapped down over her mouth. He loved her laugh. But too soon it faded away and she stared at the table, pushing her cup back and forth with her thumb. "I hope Izzie doesn't find out," she said.

"Huh?"

"That we violated her kitchen!" she hissed.

"We straightened everything up," he said dismissively. "Besides, she pays you rent. Not the other way around. It's your kitchen."

"Spiritually, it's Izzie's."

"Spiritually?"

"Yeah. You know, it's her thing. She probably has a sixth sense about everything done in there. If she gets all accusing, I'm sending her your way."

Derek cringed. "Oh, you'd better be kidding."

Meredith bit down on her lip and grinned at him. "Can't be any more awkward than talking to her while wearing nothing but a pillow."

He nearly choked on his coffee. "She told you about that?"

She shrugged. "Izzie talks a lot."

"Right…" He frowned, trying to think of something to say that would bring the conversation around to one of his less humiliating moments, but Meredith changed the topic for him.

She sighed and rubbed her hands together. "I'm serious though, this thing with Bailey. Just what did you say to her?"

He'd rather give her a rundown of his top ten most humiliating moments than answer that. The truth was not something she'd take kindly to, but anything less than that after all her honesty the night before felt tantamount to a crime. He curled his fingers around his coffee cup and then stretched them out straight. Curled them again. He forced himself to meet her eyes. "Meredith…" He said her name gently, like an apology. Apparently that was enough.

She lost her smile. "You told her about the water," she said quietly. "Didn't you?"

"I thought you weren't okay," he said with a heavy sigh. "And I didn't know what to do."

Meredith kept going as if she hadn't heard him. "Just so we're clear, my boss thinks I might _kill _myself?"

"She doesn't think that," said Derek immediately.

"Bailey thinks I'm a suicidal freak," she insisted.

"That's not true," he said. "You know it's not. She's worried about you because I was worried."

Meredith just glared at him, sipping her coffee through pursed lips.

"I love you," he added with what he hoped was his very best, charming smile.

"Derek…" She exhaled loudly. "I know you were worried, but one word from you and suddenly I'm an intern all over again. I did my intern year already. It was crappy, and I don't want to do it again."

"Okay," he said with a shrug. "I'll talk to Bailey."

Meredith shook her head. "You don't have to do that. It's fine. It's…whatever. I probably deserve it anyway."

"You don't deserve it," he said. She just rolled her eyes. Ever since he'd made the mistake of kicking her off the trial, she'd become decidedly self-deprecating. He missed her confidence. He hated that it was gone. Most of all, he hated that he'd had a part to play in taking it away from her. "She's changing your job because of what I said to her, and it's obviously upsetting you. It's my responsibility to fix it," he said firmly.

She stared at him for a long time, her face stony and expressionless. He half expected her to carry on with being moody and snap at him about his need to always save the day, but she only nodded her head. Took a shallow breath. "Okay," she said, her voice almost soft enough to qualify as a whisper.

"I'll find her after my surgery."

"Thank you," she said, still quiet and withdrawn.

He fell silent and took a sip of his coffee. After his surgery… He cast a glance at his watch. There was still too much time before Sarah went under. Too much time to wait and worry. Too much time until he knew if she would live. Or if he would kill her. He coughed and wiped his hands on his scrubs. His palms felt sweaty.

"It's going to be okay," said Meredith.

Derek jerked his head up to look at her. "What?"

"Stop stressing," she said quietly.

He frowned, amazed that she had picked up on his changing mood so easily. He took a slow swallow from his coffee cup, but it did nothing for him. His throat felt dry. "They're not telling her," he said.

"I know."

"I could kill her in an hour, and she doesn't even know it," he said bitterly. Sarah's lack of knowledge suddenly felt unbearable.

"You're not going to kill her," said Meredith.

"Thirteen of our clinical trial patients died. Thirteen out of fourteen. That's over ninety percent."

"Because it was a trial! Derek, look at me," she said. He shook his head, contemplating the lid on his coffee cup instead. It wasn't right for someone so small to be so sick. Meredith leaned forward over the table, her voice growing insistent. "Look at me," she said again.

He lifted his head. "What?" he muttered.

"You like this girl," she said. "Sarah. You like her a lot. But she's just a patient, Derek. She's not our daughter."

His cheeks burned with a hot, guilty blush. "I know that," he said roughly, sounding harsh enough to make Meredith flinch. She shrank away from him. He picked up his coffee cup only to set it down again. "I hate this," he growled. "When it's a child…" _When she looks so much like you_. He slumped forward, his shoulders sagging, and buried his head in his hands.

He sat alone in silence and worry for a long time, but then he heard Meredith get up from her seat on the other side of the table. Her shoes scuffed against the tile, and then she was near to him, warm and soft, filling the empty chair at his left side. She didn't touch him, but the faint scent of her conditioner curled around him. Lavender. He could hear her breathe.

"You will get her through this," she said gently, nearly whispering the words. "I know you will."

He straightened up and turned to face her. "I want you there."

She closed her eyes. "Please stop," she said.

Derek gave a dejected nod and turned back to his coffee cup. Meredith started fidgeting with her watch, working it round and round her wrist in constant circles. The little clink-clink of metal against the tabletop set him on edge. She seemed as troubled as he was. Maybe more. He reached out and stilled her hands.

She just went from messing with her watch to tapping her foot, as if she was suddenly bubbling over with nervous energy she couldn't suppress. The sound rattled his brain. It was hell on his nerves. "Meredith," he groaned.

"I want to tell you this thing," she blurted, twisting in her chair so she was facing him. He could see her chest rise and fall with every breath. "And I don't know if I should, but I've been thinking about it ever since I talked to Olivia, and…" She trailed off and resumed spinning her watch in noisy circles.

He clenched his jaw. "And what?"

"And maybe it's important," she said. "Maybe it's not. Maybe this is me being stupid, but you're freaking out here, and…"

"I'm not freaking out," he said indignantly. He never even used the phrase. And she was the one rattling like a teacup on a freight train.

But Meredith huffed at him. "You are," she said. "You _so_ are. And I just think that maybe this would help."

"Fine," he said, not relinquishing his skepticism. What would help was her next to him in the OR. What would help was a post-op CT of Sarah Roche that showed a shrinking tumor in her parietal lobe. He raised an eyebrow, feeling impatient. "What is it?" he asked. Normally he found her tendency to babble on and on into incoherency adorable, but he didn't have a damn clue how some rambled story he had to piece together was supposed to save Sarah's life.

Meredith shook her head. "I think…" She pursed her lips together and stared past him, suddenly seeming very far away. When she spoke again, her voice was faint. "I think you should give her a reason."

"A reason?"

"Yes. To fight to stay alive."

"She doesn't know she's dying, Meredith."

"That doesn't mean you can't give her a reason," she insisted. "Sometimes you just need to remember what's important, what you're going to lose. If you don't…" She shrugged her shoulders. "Then you don't try hard enough to stay alive."

He narrowed his eyes. "You're talking about the water?" he asked dourly. As if thinking of her dead body, blue as a fucking Smurf, was going to help with anything.

"No," said Meredith, tilting her head from side to side. "Well, yes. In a way, that too, but that was different. It's just, don't you think patients have a choice sometimes? That maybe there's a split second where someone's unconscious has to choose life or death, and if they haven't even thought about everything they're going to lose, how can they make a choice like that?"

Derek snorted. "So whenever a patient dies, it's because subconsciously they wanted to?" He saw her face fall and knew he could've done a better job at sounding less disbelieving, less dismissive.

"That's not what I'm trying to say," she said, turning away from him to watch the few stragglers in the cafeteria. Her shoulders slumped and she looked very small. Derek drank from his coffee, feeling like an ass.

"Mer," he said at last.

She met his eyes again, seeming sad and somehow even further away. "Sometimes it can just be too late," she mumbled.

"Too late," he repeated. He stared at her, at the quiet distance she held in her eyes. She was tracing her lower lip with her tongue, worrying at it with her teeth. He felt tense and unsettled. "What are you talking about?"

She stared at him for a long time in silence, palms flat against the table. "I want to tell you this thing," she said again, quietly this time.

"Okay."

"But…" She took a deep breath. "If I tell you, you have to promise not to think like a neurosurgeon."

"What?" asked Derek. He gestured towards his scrubs. His lab coat. The id badge that clearly marked him as the Head of Neurosurgery. "You're aware that's what I do, right?" She might as well ask him to stop thinking like a guy. It was about as instinctive.

Meredith just shook her head. She yanked the top off her half-emptied coffee cup and started pouring in sugar packets despite the fact she drank it black. She added one. Then another. A third. A fourth. Her fingers were trembling a little and she spilled sugar on the table. He reached out and took her hand, curling his fingers around hers before she could add a fifth packet.

"I'll give it a try," he said, squeezing her hand.

She nodded but pulled her hand from his. "I don't want you to tell me about ketamine," she said quickly, her voice quiet and tense. Agitated. He could make out a determined blush spreading across her cheeks. "Or REM intrusion. Or cerebral anoxia or any of it, okay?"

He stared at her. Don't think like a neurosurgeon. He knew the research. Ketamine. REM intrusion. Cerebral anoxia. All frequently trotted out as possible explanations for near death experiences.

And she'd been clinically dead for hours.

_When I drowned it was different for you than it was for me. _

He'd always assumed she meant some renewed zest for life. A thrill at still being alive that had unfortunately come with much too short a fuse. It had been devoured by something dark and depressing inside her before he'd even realized what was happening. He never would've imagined her seeing bright lights and dark tunnels, but he supposed it was possible.

_Something happened to me and I really don't know how to explain it without sounding like..._

Whatever it was, it had to be important to her. The hand she'd pulled from his was shaking, her fingers consumed by tiny little tremors that ran beneath her skin like electric shocks.

"What did you see?"

She finally met his eyes at that. "Promise me you won't say them."

"All the reasons it wasn't real?"

"Yes," said Meredith. "I've thought of them. Believe me, I have. But I don't want you to… I just, you _can't_."

"I won't," he promised. "Tell me what you saw."

She tensed a little at his words but did as he asked. Still, her voice was faint, and she went back to not looking at him. "I woke up in the hospital," she said. "After I drowned. The whole place was empty except for… Except for all these dead people." She looked up abruptly like a startled animal. "Crap. I shouldn't do this. You're going to think I'm crazy. Again."

Derek shook his head. "Who was with you?"

"Old patients, mostly. And Dylan."

"Dylan?"

"Yeah," she said. "Did I ever tell you about him?"

"No," he said. "You didn't." He frowned and waited for her to elaborate. If Dylan was some guy she'd been with in the past, he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

"He was from the bomb squad," said Meredith. "You probably met him that day. He's the one who took the bomb from me and blew up."

He swallowed around the sudden lump in his throat. She'd said the words flatly like she was reporting a series of facts. Like she wasn't the one who'd had to watch as a man exploded into a million pieces right in front of her. Like she hadn't been blown back by the bomb herself. Knocked to the ground and battered about. He still remembered the cut on her forehead she'd had that night. The bandages wrapped around her slender hand.

She'd almost died that day.

"The bomb," he said in a hoarse voice. "I remember that."

Meredith nodded. "Yeah. Doc was there too," she added abruptly, suddenly smiling and okay again. He smiled back hesitantly; he doubted he'd ever understand the way she was with death. "It sounds weird. Trust me. I know it sounds weird. Why couldn't I have just seen normal ghosts, like a favorite dead aunt or something?"

"You have a favorite dead aunt?"

"No," she muttered. She sipped at her overly sweetened coffee and made a face, reaching for his instead. He let her. He loved the casual way their things had begun to mingle together. The way she'd pull on his shirt, eat from his plate. Steal sips of his drink. All of it without asking as if she was starting to understand that all that was his was hers now too. She wrinkled her nose. "No favorite dead aunt. Just the dead hospital freak show."

Derek grinned. "What happened at the dead hospital freak show?"

"I was looking for some bandages. Bonnie wouldn't stop bleeding out, but…that's not really the point." She shrugged. "I was stuck there. I couldn't go back to my body."

"You couldn't go back to your body," he echoed.

She just hummed and stared at her hands.

"But you did come back," he said. "You're here." Meredith stayed silent, but she looked up at him and then away, shrugging again. He had a hunch she was going to make him pry this out of her bit by bit, word by torturous word. She began shredding the emptied sugar packets. Her eyes were wide open and unsure.

_I've never done this before._

Sometimes he let himself forget that. He'd do better to remember. It shaped everything she said. Everything she did. She'd never been in love before. She didn't know how to share a life and spill her secrets to someone. Not instinctively. It was all new to her.

Derek squeezed her hand, trying to reassure her. "How'd you get back?"

"I had to realize things," she said quietly.

"Like what?"

"The water," she mumbled, avoiding his eyes. Her cheeks tinged pink. "What happened in the water, and…" She trailed off and shook her head.

He'd been right about the prying then. Word by word. "And," he repeated in a hushed voice. "What else?"

She swept her fingers over the table, gathering the remains of the savaged sugar packets into a pile. Little specks like pale blue confetti. "I needed a reason to fight," she said flatly. She shifted in her chair, refusing to look at him. "That's it."

"Okay." He frowned at the disconnected edges of her story, knowing instinctively that she wasn't telling him everything. "And once you had a reason you could come back?"

Her eyes darkened. "Something like that," she muttered.

"Meredith…"

"That's it," she snapped. "The end."

"That's it?" He shook his head, torn between frustration over whatever it was she was keeping hidden and confusion over why she'd been so set on telling him this in the first place if she wasn't even going to finish it.

"Yeah…"

He raked a hand back through his hair, staring at her. "That's honestly all you're going to tell me? What's the reason? How'd you get back? Why is this even important?"

Her eyes went from guilty to wounded in a flash, and her voice came out irritated. "It's important because it happened to me," she said. "When I was dead. And because you're worried about Sarah dying too, and I just think that sometimes people need a reason to keep fighting."

"She loves her family," snapped Derek. "Most people call that a reason. Most people _fight_ to stay with the ones they love."

He could feel her stiffen even though they weren't touching, and the color drained from her face. His accusation hung in the air, and he knew it was too much to hope for that she hadn't picked up on it. Derek stared down at the tabletop, his shoulders hunched, done in by a sudden dose of shame. The stress was making him nasty. He was letting it make him nasty, letting it hurt her. He sighed and tried to find an apology, but she was already getting to her feet.

"I should get back to work," she said quietly. "Good luck with your surgery."

"Mer…"

She shook her head. "I have to go."

And she did.

She turned on her heel and walked away, leaving him with the job of tossing out their coffee cups and the remains of her massacred sugar packets. He left the cafeteria frustrated with her, but disgusted with himself. She didn't deserve to have what had happened in the water thrown in her face like that, no matter how much it stung that their love hadn't been enough to keep her swimming. The wounds from her childhood ran deep and he knew it. She'd given him a front row seat to everything her mother had done to her.

And snapping at her hadn't made Sarah's surgery any less daunting.

He felt rattled and uncertain as he headed back to Sarah's room. He tried to push Meredith from his mind so he could focus, but her words wouldn't leave him.

_I think you should give her a reason._

But Sarah had already been transferred to a gurney and sat waiting for an orderly to take her down. He didn't know what to say. Mike and Olivia stood crowded close to her, Mike holding one tiny hand in his while Olivia stroked their daughter's hair. Sarah's bear sat at the foot of her emptied bed, sporting a freshly bandaged head, and the child pointed at it the moment he walked in.

"Krista surgeoned my bear," she announced proudly. She was a good deal more animated than she'd been the last time he saw her, and he forced himself to stifle the sudden surge of happiness that coursed through him at that. Her changed mood came from the new round of drugs administered directly before surgery and not any miraculous change in her health.

Still, he smiled and walked over to the bed. "I can see that," he said, bending down to touch a finger to the ratty bear's crumpled face.

"The child life specialist walked her through the procedure using her bear," volunteered Mike. His face was tense with worry, but he managed a weak smile. "That seemed to help a bit."

"Good," said Derek as he straightened up. "I'm glad to hear it."

"Smelly didn't died, Dr. Shepherd."

"That's wonderful, Sarah," he said. He cast a glance at Olivia and found her with watery eyes, bending down to press a kiss to her daughter's forehead.

"That's right," she whispered. "Smelly is all better now. Just like you will be, baby."

Sarah's smile disappeared abruptly, and she stared up at her mother, her tiny mouth a solemn line. "Okay," she said in a little, whispered voice.

"It's about time," said Derek as he caught sight of an orderly waiting in the doorway. He glanced at the name embroidered on the young man's shirt. "Ross here is going to take her down." He tilted his head towards the orderly, and Mike and Olivia looked up in unison. She nodded and gulped a breath of air, gasping like it hurt her.

"Sarah," she said softly, turning back to her daughter. "This nice man is going to take you to your surgery. Just like they did for Smelly. And I'll see you soon, princess. It's going to be okay." She leaned over the gurney and gathered Sarah in her arms, rocking her back and forth. "You don't need to be scared," she whispered. "Mama loves you." She squeezed her daughter even tighter and buried her head in Sarah's messy curls, breathing in. "I love you so much."

When Olivia straightened up, tears were streaming down her face, and Sarah looked stricken. Derek understood the look in her eyes; he had felt it himself the day his father died. Watching his mother's tears as a child had shaken a foundation he'd once imagined could never so much as tremble. It had turned the world upside down.

"I love you, Sarah-bear," said Mike, bending down until he was at his daughter's level. He kept the tears at bay, but Derek could hear them lurking in his voice. When he straightened up, the orderly moved forward. The man had a pleasant face and he smiled as he introduced himself to Sarah, but the child instantly recoiled.

Her eyes widened and she stared up at him, blinking away sudden tears. "No," she cried. She looked from Ross to Olivia, frantically back and forth. "I don't wanna. Mama, I don't wanna go."

"Oh, baby," whimpered Olivia, her eyes brimming over again. "I know." Mike slung an arm around his wife and pulled her close. She seemed about to collapse. As if her next breath would have her at her breaking point, her daughter's protest enough to rob her of what little remained of her composure. She clutched a fistful of his sweater and tried to smile for Sarah's sake.

"Come on, my brave girl," said Mike gently. "It's okay. We'll be waiting right here for you, and Dr. Shepherd's going to be with you for your whole surgery."

Sarah turned to Derek at that. Her cheeks were tear streaked and her lower lip stuck out, trembling violently. "Promise?" she asked, her voice very small.

"Promise," he said solemnly. "I'll be there the entire time." He smiled at her, bending down so they were eye to eye. "How about if I take you down for surgery?" he asked, hoping that would be less traumatic for her than the orderly seemed to be. At least he was a familiar face. "Would you like to go ride in an elevator with me?"

Sarah stared at him for a moment, lips pursed together in a stubborn pout. "Okay," she decided, casting another glance at the orderly as if he was going to leap forward anyway and whisk her away from everyone she knew. Derek turned to the man, dismissing him with a quiet word. He seemed relieved to escape the tears, and Sarah seemed to relax a little when he disappeared.

But then came a final round of hugs and kisses that had her looking even more unsettled than before. Derek found himself wheeling a silent, trembling girl down the hall towards the elevator. Despite all his nieces and nephews and previous pediatric patients, he felt at a total loss alone with her. Meredith's words were loud in his mind, and he couldn't make her smile. She ignored his questions and simply laid there in silence until the elevator door slid shut behind them, sealing them off.

She caught him off guard when she finally spoke. "Do you have an apple, Dr. Shepherd?"

"No," said Derek, frowning at the question. "I don't. Why do you want an apple?"

She angled her head to stare at him, regarding him with solemn, sea colored eyes. Meredith's eyes. "I feel like maybe I am dying," she said in a soft voice. "I could eat it to be better, okay?"

His heart dropped straight down to the bottom of the elevator shaft. "You can't have an apple right now, Sarah," he said sadly. "No food before surgery."

"Oh." She nodded slowly. Her lower lip trembled a little and he could feel the uncertainty in her. The fear. She knew something was wrong even though she hadn't been told. He opened his mouth but he had no words. No magical reason that would make everything better, no matter what Meredith seemed to think. It wasn't his place. It wasn't even allowed.

"It's okay," he said at last, his voice hoarse. "I'll take care of you."

She gave him one of her smiles, not as bold as the one she'd had when she scribbled him the ocean, but every bit as captivating. "'Cause you're gonna surgeon my head," she mumbled just as the elevator doors slid open.

He froze when he found her standing on the other side. Meredith. She'd pulled her hair from its bun since he'd seen her last, and it tumbled over her shoulder in waves of dirty blonde. Her eyes darted from him to Sarah and back to study his face.

"Hey," he said softly, tentatively. Not forgetting the way they'd parted.

She nodded. "Hey. Getting off?" she asked, taking a step back to make room for him to exit with the gurney.

"Yeah."

Meredith stared down at the child, and Derek was struck again by the similarities. The hair, the eyes. The shared tendency to scribble in blue, one in a childhood long over and the other in a childhood dangerously close to ending. She brushed past him as they changed places. The sleeve of her lab coat just whispered across his arm, passing like a ghost, and then she was stepping onto the elevator and turning to face him. Her smile was sad when she looked up from Sarah to meet his eyes, and he knew she understood who this was. That this was Sarah.

He watched her as the doors started to close, feeling a sudden, heavy weight on his shoulders as if he desperately wanted to say something but couldn't for the life of him figure out what it was.

Other than stay.

But then the elevator doors closed between them and there was only a sudden wall of silver where before he'd seen her smile. He turned back to Sarah and started to push her down the hallway towards OR four. His feet felt heavy.

"Grandpa died when I was five, so I don't get to see him again," she said suddenly.

Derek nodded. "My Grandpa died too. A long time ago."

"Were you sad?"

"Yeah," he said softly. "I was."

"Mama's sad," continued Sarah. "And Daddy too." Her voice was thin and troubled, and he knew she was desperately trying to piece together a puzzle she didn't understand.

_I think you should give her a reason._

He shook his head in frustration but stopped the gurney abruptly, just outside the OR. There was a line that separated right and wrong. A land of maybe. An in between. Meredith could walk it blindfolded. She'd know what could be said and what kept silent. She was the one who knew what the hell it was he was even trying to explain here. He didn't have a clue what to say. He wasn't the one who'd died and apparently kept company with ghosts. But Sarah was looking at him with wide eyes and innocence, and he had to try. "They just want to know you'll come back to them," he said quietly. "They love you and they want you back."

Sarah blinked, long eyelashes sweeping against her cheeks. She said nothing.

"You don't need to be afraid," he added. _He_ was afraid. "Just know that you're going to come back for them. Will you do that, Sarah?"

"Okay," she said with a tiny nod of her head. Derek wasn't sure how much that one word meant she understood, but it was the most he would let himself say. There could be no long conversations about life and death. Not with another couple's child. Not with a little girl who was meant to be left in the dark.

"Okay," he echoed. He hoped it was enough.

He squeezed her tiny hand in his and promised to be right back, relinquishing her to the care of the scrub nurses while he went to scrub in. The water pounded against the metal basin, and he lost himself in the overwhelming roar and the sting of sharply antiseptic soap against his skin. The OR was pale blue and white light, and a lump formed in his throat at the sight of Sarah already transferred to the table. The room seemed to swallow her whole.

She tracked him with her eyes from the moment she caught sight of him again, seeming to cling to his every word. He tried to remember all that she said before the anesthesiologist put her under in case they were the last words she'd ever say. He smiled and answered her back and promised himself that they wouldn't be. He watched the slow fade from consciousness as the drugs took hold, and then Sarah wasn't there. Her head was placed in a Mayfield clamp, locking her skull perfectly still. Her hairline was shaved back, and she was lost beneath drapes of surgical blue. He watched her disappear, wondering if her mind had already gone somewhere the way Meredith's had. If she was waking up in an empty hospital with no one really there. But a six year old would go somewhere else, surely, if she went anywhere at all. He pushed away the worries and held out his hand.

"Scalpel, please."

His confidence returned with the rhythm of the beeping monitors. The quiet sounds of scrub nurses and surgical techs, all those bodies breathing. The hum of the drill as he made the burr holes. Hess stood at his side, his body filling the space where Meredith was supposed to be. He missed her, but Derek spoke in a clear, untroubled voice, answering the resident's eager questions about the procedure as he cut out Sarah's skull flap. This was surgery. As familiar to him as his own name. He'd never felt more certain that he could save her than he did in that moment.

Derek had finished peeling back the dura when a strange, metallic rattling filled the room.

"Oh my God," gasped a nurse, stepping back from the instrument tray even as she reached out to steady it with her hands.

"What?" He looked up, but he didn't need an answer.

Scalpels, clamps and craniotomes. All of them trembling. A shiver ran down his spine, and he felt the floor start to shake.


	14. Chapter 13

_So, here's the next chapter. I know people hate don't like cliffhanger endings, so I wrote this as fast as I could to get you what happened next! Thank you so much to everyone who's been reading. Especially you guys who take the time to leave me some feedback. Thank you! I appreciate it so much. Also, I just want to mention that there were be a bit of a delay before the next update. I'm going to Greece in a few days and will be gone for two weeks, so I won't be able to post until I get back. Sorry about that and thanks for reading!_

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Meredith stood with her toes to the wall, a breath away from the OR board. Up close it looked endless and alien, black marks on white for as far as she could see. All of it was illegible and somehow easier to bear that way. So much as a single step back would bring his name into focus again. _Shepherd._ Scratched right there in some nurse's hand as the attending surgeon in OR four. She had it memorized already. The slight squiggle in the S as if the hand that wrote it had slipped a very little. The way the last two letters were squished together with no space in between. The fact that if she let her gaze slide along the wall, she'd see the words Sarah Roche, age six, and find that her surgery had started exactly two minutes ago. The first clinical trial surgery without her.

"Okay, if you need to stand that close to the board to read it, I'll buy you some glasses myself." Cristina's voice sliced straight through her thoughts, and she spun around, her back to the board as if she meant to hide it.

"What? I wasn't…" Meredith shook her head, feeling uncertain; the last words they'd exchanged the previous night had been unpleasant at best. "I wasn't trying to read it."

Cristina just raised an eyebrow. "Well what were you doing?"

"I…" She sighed. There was no good response to that. All possible answers pointed to pathetic. She felt useless, adrift and uncertain, consumed by a confusing sort of stillness. Watching, waiting, wanting to move but having nowhere to go. Even her pager had been unusually silent all morning, no doubt Bailey's doing. Special treatment for the suicidal freak. The surgically incompetent daughter of Ellis freaking Grey. She was now officially good for nothing more than discharging patients and ogling the OR board from way too close. "I wasn't reading it," she repeated lamely.

"Move your head."

"Huh?" She shuffled to the side a step, and realization slid across Cristina's face.

"He still won't let you scrub in?"

There was something accusing to her tone, and Meredith found herself yanked straight back to the previous night. To whatever it was they'd had at Joe's. She wanted to call it a fight, but there hadn't been any yelling. It was not quite a fight. A not-fight, and she didn't have a clue what the protocol was for post not-fight conversations between best friends. She settled for shrugging, avoiding Cristina's eyes. "He took it back," she muttered. "The ban is lifted or whatever."

"And you're standing here why?"

"I'm just…not scrubbing in."

"Right," she snorted derisively. "What'd he do now?"

"Cristina…" she sighed. It felt like déjà vu. This was how it had all started the night before. Her best friend's name in that same drawn out tone, brittle on the outside and weary within. Frustrated.

"_Cristina…" She picked up her shot glass only to set it down again without taking so much as a single sip. "It's not a big deal."_

"_I thought we were hating him this morning."_

"_I was mad," said Meredith. "But I didn't hate him. Besides…" She sighed, thinking back to their fight in the on-call room. That ugly day in the bay shoved between them like a weapon. "We discussed it," she said quietly. _

"_Discussed it as in had an actual conversation or discussed it as code for you stood there and he yelled?" _

"_I…" She hesitated a moment too long and Cristina shook her head. _

"_I don't know why I even bother asking. Of course he yelled." _

"_We both yelled," muttered Meredith. "Both of us."_

"_Oh because that makes it so much better." Her voice was dry with sarcasm. "Did he even have a reason?"_

"_A reason?"_

"_For kicking you off the trial."_

_Meredith just nodded, pushing her shot glass aimlessly back and forth with the tip of her finger. He had reasons alright. She heaved a sigh and nudged her glass a little further to the right._

"_And?" pressed Cristina when she stayed silent. _

"_I don't…" Meredith glanced at her out of the corner of her eye. "I let him read the diary, and now things are…" She sighed again, softly. Now he thought she might be up for killing herself and as much as it hurt, she couldn't hate him for his fear. "I don't know," she said at last. "It's complicated."_

"_You open up to him, and he uses it as an excuse to kick you off surgery? That's not complicated. That's him being an ass."_

"_It's not like that," she said defensively. "He's worried. I mean, he's really worried, Cristina, and what am I supposed to do? Just laugh and tell him to forget it? I can't… I can't do that. This is serious." _

_Cristina raised an eyebrow. "What the hell did you let him read?" _

"_Just some stuff." _

"_But it's mostly surgical…" _

"_This wasn't," she said darkly, bringing her shot glass to her lips and draining it in one swift swallow. _

"_Well, what was it then?" _

_She shrugged and tried to act like it was nothing. "Some stuff about my mother."_

"_It's all about your mother."_

"_Yeah, well…" said Meredith, spinning her emptied shot glass round and round in tight circles. She shifted in her seat uncomfortably, avoiding Cristina's eyes. "He read some stuff and now he's worried. That's it." _

"_Right," said Cristina. Her tone had a hard edge to it, something almost injured, and Meredith knew she'd realized a part of the diary had been shared only with Derek. _

_She closed her eyes, feeling a surge of guilt. It wasn't that she didn't trust Cristina with the truth. She did. She'd trust her with anything, but lately she'd been feeling this strange new desire creeping over her. A longing to have some things that were just for her and Derek. No one else. Not even Cristina. Apparently the aftermath of the kitchen floor was one of those things. Even if it had led to a brutal screaming match in the on-call room and a shower cold enough to haunt Derek with memories of the bay, it was still just for them. Their nightmare. Their mess to work through. She opened her mouth to apologize for the secrecy, but Cristina was already talking._

"_He kicked you out of surgery because of your relationship," she said flatly. "It doesn't matter what he read or how worried he's pretending to be. It's still inexcusable. Stop trying to explain it away and make him McDreamy again."_

"_I'm not!" she spluttered. "I'm not explaining it away, but I'm not going to freaking tar and feather him for it either."_

"_Well you should do something!" snapped Cristina. She looked away, staring resolutely down at the counter, wild black curls falling forward to hide her face. When she spoke again, her voice was hoarse. "Burke used to keep me out of surgery when I didn't do what he wanted. Bad girlfriends get sent to the pit. You want Derek to treat you like that?"_

"_No," said Meredith numbly, caught off guard by the sound of Burke's name. She couldn't remember the last time she'd heard it. _

"_Then stand up to him for once in your life! Demand some respect, Meredith."_

"_I do," she said, shaking her head. "He does respect me, but I can't just…" She sighed wearily. "It's not like that. It's hard."_

_  
Cristina set down her glass with a heavy thud. Her dark eyes shone with frustration and something harsher still, something angry. "It's not hard. Your problem is that the only thing you know how to do with him is lay back and take it."_

_Meredith stared at her in disbelief, her cheeks burning. "Right…" she said, her voice thin and barely audible. "That's all I know how to do." The room started reeling. She turned away abruptly and flagged down the bartender. "Joe, I'm gonna need another drink…"_

Cristina's words rang fresh in her mind, and she stared at her with narrowed eyes. Maybe it was more than a not-fight after all. "Look," she said bluntly. "You and I don't need to talk about Derek." She pivoted around to face the board with what she hoped was an air of finality and waited for Cristina to just walk away. But the sound of footsteps never came, and a prickly silence stretched between them.

Finally, Cristina spoke. "OR four has a gallery," she said. "We could watch."

Meredith hesitated. For Cristina, that counted as an apology. _But…_ She shook her head, still staring at the board. "I don't want to watch."

"Oh."

She glanced back in time to see Cristina's face harden, pulling into a mask she'd worn often enough herself. It was how they made everything fine even when things were so far from fine it was hard to remember what the word felt like; if you pretended something hard enough and long enough, it was bound to become true. Meredith sighed heavily. She was so tired of feeling like a yo-yo swinging violently back and forth between Derek and Cristina. She wished she had it in her not to care, that she could give Cristina the cold shoulder until she got over whatever the hell her problem was with Derek, but this was her best friend. More her sister than Lexie and Molly would ever be. "OR four leaks," she offered at last, trying to keep her voice light.

Cristina frowned at her skeptically. "What?"

"It leaks. Up in the gallery, ever since the flood. I don't want to sit there." She could hear how nervous she sounded and it made her cringe.

"It leaks…"

"It does," she said weakly. Not that she'd ever felt it herself, but she'd heard a nurse complaining once, and the freaking ceiling had caved in thanks to water damage, so it was absolutely, completely plausible. "Look, I just don't want to watch, okay?" Her voice was still too tense, still so far away from how she used to talk to Cristina.

"Fine," she said. "Whatever. We won't watch."

"Good," said Meredith. She nodded her head, but it brought her no relief. Things were strained again, awful. This was her best friend, and she didn't know what to say. "I should go do this," she announced. Only _this _wasn't actually anything at all. Just a desperate attempt at escaping all the awkward. Like the very, very bad friend she was. No wonder they were always fighting these days. On top of everything else, she was a crappy friend. She started to walk away down the hall, but Cristina fell into step beside her. Meredith cringed, feeling like a little kid caught elbow deep in the cookie jar. Not that her mother had ever kept a cookie jar stocked for her to get caught in, but she imagined this was what it would've felt like if it'd ever happened. Guilty and sick. Full of shame. She racked her mind for some sort of purpose or direction she could give her walk. Something, anything they could talk about the way they used to without Derek hanging between them.

"I scrubbed in on a valve replacement this morning," volunteered Cristina.

"Oh," said Meredith with a sigh of relief. Valve replacements. They could definitely talk about those without things getting awkward and Derek-y. At least she hoped they could. "How was that?"

"Bloody. Long. Amazing."

She smiled. "Did the patient make it?"

"Yeah," said Cristina with a shrug. "He's stable." The answer was offhanded, detached. How her mother would've answered. Definitely not how Derek would answer though. At least not this new Derek with his sudden desperation to save Sarah. It scared her to think of what would happen if the child didn't pull through. Chances were good he'd fall apart. Meredith shook her head, frowning to herself, and they plummeted back into silence. She had nothing else to say.

The truth was she didn't want to talk about freaking valve replacements. As procedures went, she wasn't even that fond of them. She wanted to talk about Derek. How he was so invested in Sarah that the odds of her being able to stop worrying before the surgery was over were slim to none. How she'd made the mistake of trying to tell him about her I see dead people moment in the cafeteria. And how even though that had made everything awkward and weird, it was still okay. Because they'd learned how to fight. It was probably a stupid thing to be happy about and yet another sign of her relationship cluelessness, but she didn't care. They fixed things now instead of running in opposite directions to brood and self-destruct like shoddy little homemade bombs. They fought and then they fought like hell to make it better. Occasionally they used the kitchen table.

It was the one good thing in her crappy day, and she wanted to shout it from the rooftop. She wanted to tell all of Seattle that she, Meredith Grey, could now do functional, nondestructive relationships. But more than anything else, she wanted to be able to tell Cristina.

And she couldn't.

Not after the not-fight. Now everything was tense, full of too much left unsaid. Their footsteps were the only sounds they exchanged, and Meredith walked aimlessly, still without a place to go. She felt empty inside, lonely, like she was losing her best friend. Maybe she was. Finally, she sighed and came to a halt. "Cristina…"

Cristina raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"I just…" She lost track of what she wanted to say as a tremor ran through her, a quick lick of vibration racing from the soles of her feet straight up her spine. "Weird," she said, frowning at the feeling. She looked to Cristina and found her just as startled. She managed only a quiet, uncertain "You felt that too?" before the ground lurched beneath their feet.

Her stomach churned, and she was swallowed up by a great, resounding boom. She swore a train had hit the walls. All four at once. Dizziness swept over her in a wave and she could hear voices screaming, the frenzied footfalls of people rushing through the halls in a panic. A heavy, paralyzing fear gripped her when she tried to walk and found it impossible to stand. Her knees begged to buckle, and she went sprawling towards the floor as it shook beneath her feet. She smacked her elbow hard and cried out, but the sound was lost beneath a low, inhuman groan. A series of crashes like it was raining bricks. More shrieks. Her blood ran cold.

But when Meredith lifted her head she found nothing more than ugly hospital art swinging in its frames. A large supply shelf rattling, boxes cascading to the ground. Cristina landing with a grunt in a heap beside her. Nothing to match that horrid, haunting sound like the hospital being rent in two, but her heart wouldn't stop pounding in her chest. She thought of Derek and wanted to cry.

She couldn't say how long it lasted. How many seconds the ground rolled beneath her like some stormy sea. She was simply consumed by first one wave then the next until suddenly…nothing. The world stopped. She was flooded by stillness. Quiet. Startled voices heard somewhere out of sight.

"Holy shit," she gasped, turning immediately to Cristina. The frustration of moments ago was wiped clean, leaving nothing but concern. "Are you okay?"

Cristina groaned and rubbed her knee. "Yeah. You?"

"I think so." Standing up felt surreal. She was half convinced the ground was still shaking. "Did that really just happen?"

"Really did," said Cristina. She scrambled to her feet as well, dusting off her scrubs, apparently unfazed. "I bet we get some decent trauma now."

Meredith just gave a faint nod, not really hearing her. "Look at this place," she whispered, nudging a box of surgical masks with the tip of her toe. Syringes and gloves, linens and suture kits. Medical supplies littered the ground.

Cristina snorted. "The nurses are gonna flip. It's all out of order."

"Yeah…" she said weakly, dazed by the aftermath. The sudden, empty calm that was following the panic. Her mind was buzzing, and she felt like she'd forgotten how to think. People were usually milling about, bustling from one place to the next, but now everyone seemed hidden away. Waiting. As if the earthquake would come back to get them. She started chewing on her lower lip. "Do you think we should…?"

"What?"

"I don't know," she stammered. "We should do something, right? Not just stand here. Maybe go see if everyone's okay." Her heart leapt into her throat and started beating faster. "I should check on Derek. He…he was in surgery."

Cristina opened her mouth to answer when her pager began buzzing loudly. She unhooked it from her scrubs, her expression darkening as she glanced at it. "Hospital's calling a code…"

Her pager went off in the next moment, beeping as it vibrated insistently against her hip. Meredith pulled it from the waistband of her scrubs and clutched it in her hand, staring and staring. It wasn't a surprise, but she couldn't look away no matter how hard she tried.

Code White.

Natural disaster.

She licked her lips, feeling suddenly cold. "Must be pretty bad then," she said, her voice hushed.

"Yeah."

They started walking in unison, taking quick steps down the hall. The OR floor was free of patients' rooms, and so they had only an empty, cluttered corridor for company until they rounded a corner and came face to face with chaos.

"Oh my god," gasped Meredith, staring straight ahead at the branch of hallway leading to ORs three and four. To where Derek was. This had to have been what she heard. That sound like the earth being torn asunder. The hall had been reduced to a dark and jagged tunnel. Huge cracks ran the length of the walls. The ceiling looked like it had been gutted. Like when Derek went fishing and came back with a trout, splitting its belly open with a knife so everything would fall out. Only this, _this _had happened to a hallway. Huge chunks of plaster littered the floor. Bits of wood and glass and other debris. She stood still, staring. Paralyzed.

She had been here once before. In that moment when she'd been blown back by the bomb.

"Are you okay?"

Meredith blinked. It took her a moment to realize Cristina wasn't speaking to her but to a nurse and some intern that wasn't hers. They came walking out of the wreckage like refugees, their scrubs dirtied, their arms scratched up.

"We're alright," said the nurse, a round, middle-aged woman with streaks of gray in her hair and bright pink lipstick coating thin lips. Meredith recognized her in a vague sort of way. Enough to want to say her name was Janine, but not enough to be sure about it. All her thoughts seemed to be leaking away, and she stood mutely beside Cristina. "Just a few bumps and bruises."

Cristina nodded. "Is anyone else in there?"

"Nope," said maybe-Janine. "That's the last of us. Trish and Elliot were with us too, but Trish got some nasty cuts from all the glass, so I sent them on ahead while I waited for Dr. Kessler here." She nodded her head at the young intern to her right. His hands were shaking, his eyes wide. He seemed nothing short of traumatized. "No earthquakes in the Midwest, huh Dr. Kessler?" said maybe-Janine kindly. The intern just shook his head and stammered something much too soft to hear.

"What happened?" said Meredith at last, her voice barely louder than the intern's.

"The whole hospital's shoddy," said maybe-Janine with a shrug. "You know how the Chief is, always spending money on some fancy new surgical toy instead of doing the repairs that need to be done." She reached out and knocked on the wall. "It's a miracle more of this place didn't come falling down."

Meredith only nodded, feeling very far away. This was the hallway after the bomb. And it led to Derek.

"Speaking of the man himself," continued maybe-Janine, sounding cheerful and at odds with their ruined surroundings. "You two had better head on upstairs to the central nurses' station. Chief's making some kind of announcement about the protocol. He's already sent word that this hallway's off limits until further notice."

Cristina turned to follow maybe-Janine and her shell shocked intern towards the staircase, but Meredith stood rooted to the spot, staring straight into the wreckage. Derek was down there. She couldn't leave.

"Mer?" called Cristina. "Come on."

"Derek," she choked out in a gravelly voice. She felt as if she was moving through water, unable to build up any speed. Her mind kept catching, carried off to dark places by the current. "Derek's down there."

Cristina frowned. "He was in an OR, not the hall. He's fine."

Meredith stood perfectly still. Like a statue with a beating heart threatening to pound its way out of her chest. Derek was down there. Somewhere. And she could barely breathe. Her thoughts flowed like molasses, and all she could remember was the fear she'd felt when the bomb went off. She'd had a feeling that day. She closed her eyes and tried to think; she was forgetting something.

She was so sure she was forgetting something.

"Come on," said Cristina, a little gentler than before. "He was in an OR, not here." She stepped closer, her voice calm and full of reason. "He's okay. And you can't get to him anyway, Mer. Not right now. This hallway's dangerous."

She gave a weak nod of her head. "Right," she whispered. Her throat felt dry, and every breath rattled in her lungs as if her ribs were loose and rolling about inside her.

"Come on," tried Cristina for the third time. "We need to go." She took Meredith by the elbow, steering her back the way they came and into the stairwell at the other end of the hall. The door slammed shut behind them and Meredith shivered. The sound had a finality to it, jarring her like icy fingers creeping down her back. She'd had a feeling that day.

And something still felt wrong.

The main floor of the hospital was teeming with people; noise and chaos assaulted her as soon as she left the small, self contained silence of the stairwell. It was the sort of thick, cloying madness that came from too many bodies squished into the same space, and it clung to her like wet clothes. A TV mounted to the wall had been turned to the news and was blaring loudly, the voice of a female reporter cutting through the din. She was already outside, impeccably dressed with microphone in hand, and positioned strategically in front of the towering red letters spelling out Public Market Center.

…_a nightmare for tourists and natives alike at Pike Place Market where countless stands were overturned…_

The flow of the crowd pushed her towards the nurses' station, and Meredith staggered along with halting steps, eyes glued resolutely to the TV. She was barely aware of the sea of scrubs, the hospital staff swarming all around her. It was just voices.

…_disrupting the early morning commute for many. We're receiving reports of several minor collisions caused by the quake…_

Others pushed past her in street clothes, friends and family of patients most likely. Their faces were uniformly grim, their voices loud and demanding explanations. As if the hospital had caused the earthquake. A few people in hospital gowns and slippers had wandered out as well, some bravely clutching their IV polls as they too joined the throng. Meredith stared.

…_drivers who had difficulty maintaining control of their vehicles during…_

She felt empty without Derek beside her. Lost. Stranded.

…_initial seismographic readings are placing the magnitude at 6.1…_

Finally, the nurses' station came into view. She could just make out the top of Bailey's head, surrounded as she was by a mob of nervous interns, eager and helpful and alarmed all at once. Richard stood next to her, easier to spot with all his height. He held a phone to his ear, frowning and nodding his head as he muttered words that were swallowed up by the crowd.

…_reminiscent for many of the Nisqually quake of 2001 that rocked the city with a magnitude of 6.8…_

Meredith came to an abrupt halt at the edge of the fray, dizziness washing over her once more. It was complete chaos, and she barely registered Cristina stopping beside her.

…_this morning's unexpected earthquake initiated along the Seattle Fault which cuts east-west across the city, stretching from the Puget Lowland into downtown Seattle…_

"Alright, people," said Richard suddenly, hanging up the phone. His voice was loud and commanding; a hush fell over the room. Someone muted the television, and the sea of bodies shifted closer to him, shoes sending up a collective squeak against the tile floor. "Listen up. As you're obviously aware, there's been an earthquake, and it seems the surgical wing has sustained some damage. All incoming trauma will be rerouted to Mercy West until we can get a team in here to assess the damage done to the hospital." A troubled murmur rippled through the crowd, and the Chief paused to clear his throat, seeming suddenly anxious. He wiped a hand across his brow and angled his head down slightly, "Dr. Bailey, am I forgetting anything?" he asked in a lowered voice that still carried across the room.

"You want to get a count on all staff present, sir," she suggested.

"Right, right…" He straightened up again. "Everyone needs to check in with their direct superior. Interns, that means find your resident. Residents, report to Dr. Bailey here. Attendings, check in with your department heads. We need to make sure everyone's accounted for."

The crowd immediately began to move, people talking amongst themselves as if his words had been a call to action. Meredith closed her eyes, breathing heavily.

"Hey," said Cristina, nudging her with an elbow. "You okay?"

She nodded weakly. "Yeah… Fine."

"You sure?"

Meredith nodded again. "Just worried," she added quietly. There were no good words to describe the feeling. The frightening, paralyzing sense that she was missing something critical. Something more than the tragedy that was bound to occur when you combined an earthquake with an open skull flap.

Richard frowned and coughed loudly. Silence fell over the throng. "Dr. Bailey," he said. "What's next?"

"Restricted areas, sir," she said.

"Right," said Richard. "Of course." He gave an abrupt nod like he'd thought of it himself, and Meredith rolled her eyes. "Until further notice, the men's restroom on the third floor, CT, and the hallway leading to ORs three and four are off-limits. These areas all suffered prior water damage from the flood and didn't hold up so well."

And there it was. The thing she'd been missing. The feeling.

Water damage.

Her stomach plummeted straight down to her shoes.

"Report any further wreckage you come across, but I want all of my staff sticking to secured areas. We're medical professionals, people, not search and rescue. You could do more harm than good by jumping in there to lift and sort the debris. That's not your job. Let's worry about our patients here. Now, Dr. Bailey will be handing out new assignments for…"

Richard's voice was reduced to a buzzing in her ear like a gnat.

_It leaks. Up in the gallery, ever since the flood damage._

Meredith pivoted on her heel and walked away.

She moved without thinking, getting halfway down the stairs before she heard footsteps following after her. She didn't stop. Didn't so much as look back. She couldn't. She had to check on Derek.

"Meredith, wait!" called Cristina.

She stilled for a moment at the sound of her friend's voice, her hand gripping the railing hard enough to turn her knuckles white. "What?" she called back and started moving again, flying down the last two steps and out into the silent, abandoned hall.

Cristina hurried to catch up. "What are you doing?"

"Checking on Derek." She didn't stop at all that time.

"You're supposed to be getting an assignment from Bailey and rounding up your interns, not checking on Derek."

Meredith frowned and whirled around to glare at her, continuing backwards down the hall. "Yeah, well. That's what you're supposed to be doing too," she snapped. She could barely hear her voice above the sound of her pounding heartbeat. Water damage. And a hallway that looked like a bomb had gone off in its midst. There was room for nothing else in her mind. She had to see him with her own two eyes. Had to know beyond all doubt that he was okay.

"He's fine, Meredith," insisted Cristina.

"You don't know that. The Chief didn't say a word about Derek. Not one word."

"Just because he didn't take the time to update the entire hospital on how your boyfriend is doing doesn't mean a thing! I'm sure he knows exactly what's happening in his ORs."

"Because he's just that competent?" She rolled her eyes. "Please. Bailey had to spoon feed him his speech up there."

She staggered to a halt as she reached the start of the ravaged corridor. The off limits hallway. Debris littered the floor, little specks of dirt and plaster still fluttered down from the gutted ceiling. It sent a chill down her spine.

"Look at this hallway," she said quietly, her voice dropping to a hoarse whisper. "The OR he's in had flood damage too. The ceiling has caved inbefore! Give me one reason why it won't look just like this."

Cristina stared at her, saying nothing.

"And even if the ceiling decided to stay put," continued Meredith, growing louder again. "He's a brain surgeon. They have some of the highest death rates even under the best of circumstances. But add in an earthquake and…" She cringed, swallowing hard, forcing the bile that rose in her throat back down. The little girl she'd glimpsed in the elevator could be dead already.

"Say his patient is dead, you showing up is going to help how?"

"I don't…" Meredith shook her head. She couldn't begin to guess what Derek would need if Sarah died, but she didn't want to leave him to fend for himself if she had.

"We're supposed to be checking in with Bailey," said Cristina. "She has our assignments."

"Fine," she snapped, losing what little composure she'd managed to scrape together. Every hurt and angry thing from the night before came rushing back as if some dam had been breached inside her. "Once I know Derek's okay, I'll come back and do whatever crap it is Bailey wants me to do! Why do you even care?" she added, her voice turning openly hostile.

"Because you're doing exactly what the Chief told us not to do! You're not search and rescue, Meredith. You shouldn't be down here."

"Right," scoffed Meredith, her eyes narrowing. "Because this has nothing to do with last night or the fact that you hate Derek. You just want to make sure I'm following the rules. This isn't grade school, Cristina! You're not a freaking hall monitor anymore."

She saw a pained look flash across her friend's face quick as lightening. In the next moment it was gone. "The hallway collapsed," cried Cristina, throwing her hands up in the air. "It fell on top of people! If there's an aftershock, you could get _killed!_ You can't go down there," she insisted. "It isn't safe. He isn't worth…" She stopped abruptly, leaving a deathly silence to fill the ruined corridor.

"Worth it?" finished Meredith, her voice like ice. Something roared inside her mind, a train about to run her down. "That's what you think? Derek isn't worth it?"

She was met with silence.

"Right?" she demanded, stepping closer. "The only reason he ever lets me in the OR is because he likes to screw me and this whole thing with him is just a big mistake I'm stupid enough to make again?"

Cristina stepped closer as well, shaking her head. Silence rang loudly in the ruined hallway, and they moved like circling animals, waiting to strike.

"He jerks you around!" she said at last, sounding angry and wounded. "He's done it since the day you met, and you still don't see it." She started ticking his offenses off on her fingers. "He gets you to risk your reputation to be with him, and then his wife shows up! He calls you a whore, dumps you while you're lying in a hospital bed recovering from surgery, and then dumps you again just because you're not ready to start popping out his perfect McDreamy spawn. And when you finally agree to do things his way, he's kissing nurses!" she said, her voice growing louder and louder until she was shouting. "So yeah, Meredith. I think charging to his rescue is a big mistake. Open your eyes and see how much better you can do than the ass that kicks you off of surgery on a whim!"

Meredith drew in a ragged breath, blinking back tears. She felt as if she'd been plunged straight back into the earthquake. Nothing was steady anymore, and she wasn't sure how she was still standing. "It wasn't a whim," she said, her voice hoarse and broken. "It was wrong and stupid, but it wasn't on a whim."

"Meredith…"

"No," she said, reaching out to touch the cracked wall, trying desperately to steady herself. "You are not in this relationship with us. The things that happen, the things you think make him so horrible, you're seeing it all from the outside and you…" She shook her head, "I am done feeling bad for the fact that I love Derek. I _love_ him. And if you'd just give him a chance…" A tear rolled down her cheek and she wiped it away, sniffling a little. "He isn't this big, bad whatever, and I am not his poor little victim that you need to look out for. He's my boyfriend, and one day he's going to be my husband. He's a good man."

Cristina just stared at her, her mouth gaping open. "Are you engaged?"

Meredith blinked. She wasn't sure where that had even come from. Husband. The word had slipped out without thought, caught up in the tide of angry, hurting things. "No," she said quietly.

"Did he propose?"

"No," she said again, her voice gaining a hard edge.

"Well then what do you…?"

"The future," cried Meredith, suddenly embarrassed. She could feel her cheeks burning. "I'm talking about the future! This thing with me and him isn't ending. Even though he kicked me off surgery. And he used to have a wife. And a nurse. And really crappy ideas about when we should start having babies. He's still not going anywhere. So whatever your problem is with him, you'd better get over it."

Cristina stared at her, speechless. She turned around while she still could. Before it all caught up with her and she burst into tears. This was so very like the corridor after the bomb. Everything dark and broken, shattered and alone. "I'm checking on Derek," she said again, her voice a whisper. "Find the Chief and make sure he knows OR four had water damage too."

She didn't wait for a reply before she started walking. Debris crunched beneath her feet. She could feel Cristina watching her, but she said nothing, and Meredith didn't look back. The hallway was silent, eerily so now, following the harsh words of their fight. But the anger still echoed around her, and Meredith felt tense and hollow and terrified. As if she'd ripped her heart out of her chest with her bare hands and then jumped up and down on it a few times for good measure.

Slowly, she picked her way around a chunk of rubble, something massive and alien that had to have fallen from the ceiling. A scrap of paper fluttered to the ground and she felt very cold. Her stomach was done up in a thousand knots. Every step put her that much further from her best friend, and with it came a sense of loss so great and gaping she felt as if she'd fit the Grand Canyon down inside her.

But then there was a bend in the hallway and as she rounded the corner, she could no longer feel Cristina's eyes on her back. It became easier to breathe. A very little. Until she looked up and found her path blocked. One of the tall, metal shelving units used to stack supplies had toppled over, spanning the width of the hallway and spewing its contents along the ground. Above her, pieces of the ceiling hung as if on hinges, shifting slightly back and forth. Great hunks of the building waiting to fall. Cristina's panicked voice flooded her mind.

_If there's an aftershock, you could get killed._

She shivered and stepped on top of the fallen unit, her feet slipping against myriad medical supplies she didn't stop to identify. Something creaked and Meredith let out a frightened squeak, scrambling forward, half convinced she was about to be crushed. She leapt over the edge of the shelf, breathing heavily.

And still alive.

The walls mocked her with jagged toothed grins while the ceiling spilled its entrails, but the hall hadn't come crashing down around her. Nothing had fallen. Everything was okay. She started walking again, filled with nervous laughter that sounded wrong against all the silence.

She made it another six steps before her path was blocked again. It wasn't a simple shelf she could climb over either. This was the sort of thing the Chief had to have been talking about. The kind of damage you needed search and rescue for. It was a small storm of splintered wood and mutated shelving. Shards of glass from a fallen picture frame littered the floor. There was no way she could move it out of the way. She doubted even Derek could've done it for her if he was there. Multiple sets of hands. That was what was needed, and she had only two.

Meredith spun in a circle, sick with fear. This was a stupid idea. So, so stupid. She was going to get to the OR and Derek was going to be just fine. Sarah would be alive, and he'd be busy saving her life. His eyes would crinkle at the corners when he saw her, and he'd tease her about why she came. That was exactly what would happen.

Except she was stuck in a freaking earthquake ravaged hallway, hoping like hell no more chunks of ceiling decided to fall. And she felt about two seconds away from just screaming his name.

Desperately, she dropped to her knees, staring at the tumbled, broken shelving and the hanging rubble. The shelf had fallen at an odd angle, leaving a space between it and the ground. Not a big one, but she'd always been rather small. Her movements were quick and without thought. She found herself wedged beneath the toppled shelves before she even realized what she was doing. Meredith held her breath. She could fit. Barely. The top of her back pressed against the bottom shelf, the twisted bits of metal drawing nasty scratches through her scrub top when she tried to move.

"Oww," she moaned, wincing as she wiggled forward. "Ow, ow, ow!" She closed her eyes and kept wiggling, moving forward inch by inch. Trying to shrink enough to keep her back from scraping against the shelf. Praying that nothing would shift. That she wouldn't bump the wrong thing and set it all to collapsing on top of her. A third wiggle, and then her arms were free from the mess. She scooted forward, collapsing with a gasp of relief on the other side of the obstruction. "Holy crap," she said to no one but herself. The only other sound was her pounding heartbeat.

Meredith lay still for a moment, staring up at the monstrosity she'd just crawled under. Her heart was beating so fast it hurt, and it felt like some wild animal had raked its claws violently down the length of her back. Her forearms were covered with scratches from all the broken glass, and when she wiped a hand across her brow, and it came away specked with blood. Another cut. The elbow she'd bruised during the earthquake had started throbbing as well, and her eyes filled with tears. Meredith sobbed once, the sound low and very afraid as she lay on her stinging back.

And then she grit her teeth and forced herself to stand up. She shoved every trembling fear deep down inside her, sealing it away. Closed her eyes and breathed like she had ever since she was a little girl. Since she'd first needed to lock bad things up and never let them out. She still felt sick and quivering on the inside, but it was enough to get her walking again.

Three more steps and the worst of the damage seemed to be over. She was picking her way around less and less of the rubble with every passing second until suddenly, the way in front of her was free. The contrast between the portion of hallway that had suffered water damage and the part that hadn't was staggering. A few flakes of plaster littered the usually pristine floors, the pictures hanging on the walls were crooked, and several boxes of supplies had toppled from their shelves. That was it. No nightmarish walls, cracked and gutted. Only it felt like the calm before the storm, and Meredith started to run, pounding her way towards the end of the hall. She bypassed OR three without so much as a single glance, skidding to a halt outside the scrub room for OR four.

It was too silent, and she stood still, waiting for she didn't know what. A sign. A sound. Anything at all. She shivered and walked into the scrub room, freezing in front of the broad window that stretched above the sinks. At least the glass hadn't shattered. That was something. A very little something. Her gaze flitted around the room, taking in the chaos as her heart started to pound. People stood huddled in a clump that had nothing to do with the patient, who seemed much farther away than she should be. Two men were beside her. Surgeon, anesthesiologist. But no one she recognized as Derek. Meredith tilted her head up, peering through the glass to find a sight she knew too well.

Gutted ceiling. Like another dead fish.

She wasted no time scrubbing in, just pulled gloves on over her scratched and bloodied hands, tied a scrub cap over her hair and slipped a mask on over her face. She couldn't see Derek, and the lack of him was making it impossible to breathe.

"Open," she hissed as she pressed the button that controlled the OR door. "Come on. Please, please open." She held her breath, waiting. Desperate. Reeling. It was delayed a second, or maybe her nerves were playing tricks on her, but it slid open without a hitch. Meredith stepped inside the mangled OR and stopped dead.

The cluster of people she'd seen through the window shifted a little, heads turning at the sound of the sliding door. And she could see him now. Derek. Lying on the floor directly beneath the gaping hole in the ceiling. She wondered how much of it had fallen on him.

"Meredith…"

Derek was staring at her. Hell, the entire OR staff was staring at her. And she could barely see any of it through her rapidly growing film of tears. She shook her head slowly back and forth. So slowly. Derek on the floor. Not possible. Surrounded by a heap of rubble. So not possible.

He said her name again, and she started to move, mindless of the people huddled around him, blocking her way. "Move," she said, managing to find some scrap of her voice. It sounded broken and not her own. They scattered, and then she was dropping to her knees beside him.

With all the extra bodies gone, she could see the damage done. A wound to his leg caused by some plummeting scrap from the ceiling, a thin strip of metal that spanned the length of her hand and plunged down into the meat of his thigh. It hurt to look at, but when she let her eyes wander further up his body, she found him holding a blue surgical towel to his abdomen. Meredith reached out with shaking hands to lift the cloth. Something had torn straight through his surgical gown and his scrubs, ripping a nasty gash across his stomach. It looked shallow, superficial. The towel had been enough to stop the bleeding, but the sight of his blood made something buried deep within her cry out in agony.

"You're hurt," she whispered, biting down on her lip behind her mask to keep back a sob.

"I'm okay," said Derek.

She gave a frantic shake of her head, feeling nauseous. "You're lying on the floor in a pile of what used to be the ceiling. Some of it is freaking embedded in your leg! Don't you dare tell me you're okay."

"Mer…" He let go of the towel to touch her gloved hand with his. He said her name softly. So, so gentle like they were alone together, tangled up in sheets and skin instead of blood and dirtied scrubs. "Breathe," he said.

She did as he asked, drawing in a sharp, shaky breath as she craned her neck back and stared at the ceiling, trying to calm down. It wasn't as bad as the hall. The hole was smaller. There were no shattered picture frames. No shelves to knock over. Nothing in the way except Derek, which was…odd. He lay in the very center of the OR, surrounded by the rubble. Right where the operating table was supposed to stand. Realization swept over her and she shivered. "It almost fell on her," she said slowly as she glanced to the right. To Sarah's strange new positioning. She looked back at Derek, shaking her head. "What did you do?"

"Got her out of the way," he said simply. Of course he would. Sarah was his patient. The little girl he adored. He'd find a way to get her out of harms way even if it meant taking the brunt of the collapsing ceiling on top of himself. "She's alive," he added, and her eyes filled again with tears.

"Derek," she moaned. If she'd ever had any doubts, this would've given her the answer. He would make a wonderful father. She glanced back at the child, finally growing aware of the beeping monitors tracking Sarah's life. But the rhythm was off. It was weak. Sporadic. "Derek," she said again, sharper this time. "She's not…"

"She's hanging on," he said, cutting her off roughly. She just stared at him, waiting for the truth. "By a thread," he admitted at last, and she could hear the grief in his voice.

"And you?" she pressed. "Are you hanging on? That's got to hurt a lot." Meredith scooted closer, laying her fingers against his thigh just above the puncture wound. Her nerves were shot to hell thanks to the day she'd had, and a fresh crush of anxiety overpowered her the moment she let herself refocus on his injuries. "You need sutures. And antibiotics. And probably a CT scan," she said, her voice escalating until she was speaking in high, panicked notes. "Except CT is shut down because of the damn earthquake. 6.1, Derek. It was a freaking 6.1. The city…" She shook her head again, gasping as she struggled to keep it all at bay. The mess of awful, ugly things throbbing inside her and making her want to just fall apart. "An MRI," she continued shakily. "You'll have to get an MRI instead. Did anything fall on you? You could have internal bleeding."

"Mer," said Derek firmly. "I'm here talking to you. I'm alert. I'm fine. There's no rush." She shook her head, staring down at the gash in his side, the metal scrap slicing into his thigh. It felt like the room was spinning. "Are you okay?" he added, his voice rich with concern.

She blinked at him. "What?"

"You have a cut."

"It's nothing. Just a scratch. Don't worry about me."

Derek nodded as best he could lying flat on his back. "Is the whole hospital like this?" he added. "The phone's dead."

"No," she said. "Just areas that had previous water damage. The hall leading down here is destroyed." She glanced up at the collapsed hole in the ceiling. "It's even worse than in here, but the rest of the hospital isn't too bad. Things are knocked over, a lot of supplies on the floor, but other than that, we were pretty lucky…" Her words trembled and staggered to a halt.

Derek frowned at her. "Are you sure you're okay?"

Her lower lip quivered behind her mask. She felt like she'd dumped all her insides into a blender, pressed liquefy, and then poured them back down her throat. She was pretty sure she'd just lost her best friend. And now Derek was lying on the ground with things sticking out of him. Her eyes flooded with tears, and it was all she could do to keep them from falling. "I had to see you," she said at last.

"I had to see you too," he said quietly. She couldn't see his mouth, but she could tell he was smiling. She smiled back. Her husband. She'd called him her future husband. For a moment, everything was perfect despite the ruined OR. For a moment, she felt very safe, but then an unfamiliar voice spoke and it all came crashing down.

"Sir? I really think I should go ahead and close." It was a man's voice. The surgeon standing at the head of the table. Every word was dipped oh so subtly in something that sounded a lot like panic. "Her stats keep dropping the longer we wait. She's circling the drain here…"

"No," said Derek. His voice was rough and close to angry. Upset enough for Meredith to figure out this was a debate they'd been having before she came in. "I already told you not to close. Putting her skull flap on again right now is as good as leaving her for dead."

"Derek…" said Meredith, her voice tentative. "You can't think she's going to have surgery now."

"She has too," he snapped. "She will not live long enough to get a second shot at this." He groaned and started to push himself up into a sitting position only to stop abruptly and close his eyes. "Just give me a second," he gritted out.

"Sir," continued the man. "With all due respect, you're in no condition to operate right now."

Meredith glanced back and forth between them. Derek's eyes were pinched at the corners. Crinkling like he was in pain. "Just how hurt are you?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I'm okay. I need to take care of Sarah."

"No," she said softly, staring up at the hole above them. "The ceiling fell on you, didn't it?"

"Meredith, I'm alert. I'm talking to you. I'm fine. I just need to scrub in again and then I'll be good to finish the surgery."

The man at the head of the table cleared his throat. "You're his girlfriend, aren't you?" he asked, sounding anxious and rather embarrassed. "You're Dr. Grey?"

"I…" She looked up, becoming keenly aware of the full OR for the first time since she'd walked in. The cluster of nurses and surgical techs watching them. Meredith Grey and Derek Shepherd putting on yet another freaking show for the hospital staff of Seattle Grace. She just shifted closer to him, unable to care. Let them gossip all they wanted. "Yes," she said simply. "I am."

"Then _please_ talk some sense into him. Tell him he needs a CT, not a scalpel."

She turned back to Derek, her worry mounting. "Can you even stand right now?" she demanded.

He frowned but didn't answer her. That only made her more afraid.

"Derek, you could have internal bleeding. You could get an infection. About a thousand things can go wrong when a freaking ceiling falls on you! And don't you dare tell me to just pull that thing out of your leg," she added sharply. "Think like a doctor. If it's nicked a blood vessel, that could do way more harm than good."

"It's superficial," he snapped.

"Still not pulling it out!" she snapped right back.

A heavy silence followed their words, and Meredith cast another glance at the assembled staff. Their audience.

She leaned closer to him and lowered her voice. "He's right. You know he is," she said gently. "You can't operate today. Not like this. It's a mess out there and they've got some search and rescue guys coming to clear the hallway, but someone should see if the phone's working in OR three. Tell them to hurry so we can get you out of here." She reached out and took his gloved hand in hers, squeezing it tightly. "Let him close her up," she whispered. The words were like a knife to her heart, and it was all she could do to get them out. A death sentence for a little girl.

"I promised her parents she would live," he said in a broken voice like nothing she'd ever heard before. "And I promised Sarah I'd be with her the whole time. I cannot walk away and leave her to die." He clenched his jaw and sat up. "I have to do this."

"No," said Meredith, her eyes filling with fresh tears. "You can't. Don't pretend you can stand still with that thing cutting into your leg." She glanced down at the gash on his abdomen. It had started to bleed again with the effort of sitting up, dark red blood seeping through the surgical towel. She shook her head. "I don't care if you say they're superficial; you still cannot do surgery with two open wounds! And by the time you got them stitched up… Derek, she'll be gone."

"I promised," he said again. Tears streamed down his cheeks, staining the pale blue of his surgical mask. His eyes were dark and wild, full of things it hurt to look at. "She can't die," he insisted. Every breath he drew was shallow and wheezy. She'd never seen him more vulnerable. Lying there in front of all his staff like shattered glass. "I promised her…"

Meredith sighed and glanced back at the other surgeon, a resident by the looks of his scrub cap. The one who'd been chosen to take her place in the trial. "Can he do it then?" she asked, trying to keep her skepticism at bay.

The man answered before Derek could, shaking his head and speaking in a flustered, anxious tone. "No," he said. "No. I can't. You need a laminectomy? A cordotomy? A keyhole craniotomy? No problem. I'm your guy. But I _cannot_ pull off an experimental procedure I've never so much as seen before. I'm sorry, but it's just not possible."

"Right," she whispered, closing her eyes. Sarah was going to die. "Derek," she said quietly, her voice as light as a feather. "I know this sucks, but…"

He cut her off, "Go scrub in."

"What?"

"Go scrub in."

She stared at him, mouth gaping open beneath her mask. "Are you out of your mind?" she asked. "If he can't do it, I'm certainly not going to be any help. Second year resident, remember? One step away from mangling sutures in the pit." She laughed nervously, reiterating, "Literally one step away. I babysit interns now and bring discharge papers to perfectly healthy patients who don't need any help from me. That's all I'm good for!"

"No, it's not," insisted Derek. "You can do this. Meredith, please."

She shook her head again, feeling ill. His instinct had been to kick her out of the OR. This was the fear talking. His desperation to save Sarah. It was foolish, ridiculous and completely insane. It was a thousand things and none of them good. "I know you want to save Sarah," said Meredith. "I know you want to do anything you can to keep her alive, but this is crazy. You don't want me. We can page another surgeon. Something. Anything. I got through that hallway. Someone else could too. I can go back and get us another surgeon!"

"I don't need another surgeon," said Derek. "If I paged the entire hospital, I wouldn't find a single doctor who knows this procedure as well as you do."

Meredith glanced back at the tiny girl strapped to the table. The thin and fraying thread of life she was somehow still clinging to. That was a miracle in its own rights. "I'm not a neurosurgeon," she said desperately. "If so much as a single thing went wrong…"

"Hess is a few months away from his fellowship. He'll help you with everything, but you're the only one who knows what this looks like. And I'll be right here. I'll talk you through everything."

"You can't," she stammered. "You can't be here. You're injured. We need to get you upstairs."

Derek frowned and readjusted the towel he held to his abdomen. Peeled it back a little. The bleeding had stopped again, and she let out a breath she hadn't meant to hold. "I can be here," he said. "I'm not about to leave Sarah. Or you." She started to shake her head again, but he reached out, fingers brushing against her wrist. "I'm okay," he promised. His eyes were clouded over with something she couldn't read, but his voice was calm and reassuring. "I know this needs to be looked at, but it's not life threatening. It can wait, Mer. Sarah can't. She needs you now."

"No," she cried. "She doesn't need me. I'm not who you want. I don't… I've only ever assisted! You know that."

"You're going to be an incredible surgeon," said Derek as if that was all there was to it. "You can handle this."

She shook her head. Lies. Pretty, pretty lies. Her cheeks were flushed and burning, and she felt nauseous. She was not the sort of person that belonged at the head of that table. Her mother did, but not her. She dropped kidneys. She punctured hearts. And now, he was asking her to go kill Sarah with her scalpel. It wasn't fair.

"Damn it, Derek," she snapped, eyes brimming with tears. "I'm not my mother!"

"I know you're not your mother," he said quietly. "I wouldn't want Ellis Grey even if I could have her." He reached out and grasped her hand, weaving their gloved fingers together. "Thirteen surgeries, and you were in all of them. Right next to me. This is your trial, Meredith. Not hers."

Meredith just hummed under her breath, chewing on her lip. "I don't think…" she stammered, shaking her head.

"Do you trust me?"

She laughed aloud, the sound high and thin and nervous. "Do you trust me?" she challenged, tossing a pointed glance in Sarah's direction.

"Yes," he said simply.

She blinked and turned back to him, caught off guard by his answer. He trusted her to be a good doctor. To save the life of the little girl he adored. He trusted her. She could see it in there in his eyes. Something she hadn't felt herself in a long time.

Faith. Complete and utter faith.

_And I came back to life. _

"Okay," she murmured, falling forward on a sigh as something warm washed over all the fear.

_For a moment, everything was so clear...as if the water had washed everything clean. _

Meredith pressed her forehead to his, their noses brushing against each other. Touching what little bare skin they had. She hovered close, kept from him only by the masks around their mouths. It wasn't a kiss, but his eyes fed straight into her own, and she felt as safe as if he held her in his arms.

_Do you remember that?_

"I'll be right back," she promised.

The feeling faded slightly like it always did when she found herself alone in the scrub room, water beating down against her hands, foot pressed to the pedal. She lathered up, trying desperately to cling to that confidence. To keep it from slipping away. But it was brain surgery without Derek at the head of the table. The hospital played favorites, she knew it. As much as she and Derek tried to be fair and keep their relationship separate from surgery, there was some truth to the claim. She'd never scrubbed in on so much as a single neuro procedure where he wasn't the attending surgeon.

Until now.

It felt surreal. A nurse helping her into a gown, taking the sterile towel from her, gloving her. Guiding her to the table that still stood like an island of fragile hope amidst the wrecked OR. Slipping the headset Derek always wore onto her instead. The light, the glasses, all of it was hers, and she swore it didn't fit. That it felt wrong. She bossed the nurses and the surgical techs to keep the screaming inside her mind to a minimum. "Stay with him," she ordered. "Right next to him. Clean those lacerations, bandage them. Please, find something to pack around that piece of the ceiling sticking out of his freaking leg." She pointed a finger at the nearest nurse, adding, "And, I swear to God, if he seems to worsen even slightly, you will tell me." There was no choice to whose life she'd save if she could only pick one. Maybe it was greedy to pick the love of her life over an innocent child, but it was the choice she'd make. "You will tell me," she said again.

"Mer," groaned Derek, his voice low and affectionate. He shifted slightly to accommodate the nurse bending down to tend to his injured leg. "I feel fine. Don't worry." But his eyes were pinched at the corners, and she couldn't shake her lurking fear.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," she muttered. But then she looked down and there was an open skull before her. The human brain. And Derek not beside her. "Holy crap," she said. It was exhilarating and horrifying. A nightmare and a miracle at the exact same time. She swallowed hard. She could do this. She could. She could…

She couldn't do this.

"Derek." She choked on his name, gasping in a deep breath. It felt like falling.

"You can do this," he promised as if he'd read her mind. His words washed over her, warm and familiar, and she found that she could still breathe. He trusted her.

Meredith gave a tiny nod of her head. "Okay…" she whispered.

"Okay," he said. "Tell me what you see."


	15. Chapter 14

_So, I'm back from Greece! And very, very sorry for the long stretch without an update. Thanks for being patient! And as usual, thank you to everyone who has taken the time to leave some feedback. I really appreciate it so much. I hope you enjoy the chapter!_

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The OR was a different world from Derek's vantage point on the floor. The rubble from the ceiling loomed large, casting strange shadows across the walls. All the fallen plaster masked the smell of blood and brain and antiseptic with something chalkier like layers of dust in an old attic. He could feel some of it beneath his gloved hands, grit against the latex. It was as irritating as a pebble stuck in his shoe, but every time he tried to shift away from the wreckage, the wound to his leg started to throb. He sat reluctantly on the dirty floor, trying not to mind the nurse fussing around him. She'd just returned with her arms full of lap sponges and surgical tape, apparently determined to stabilize the metal scrap piercing his thigh.

Meredith stood with her back to him, almost lost from view amidst the jumbled nest of monitors and computer screens. Scans of Sarah's brain to guide her. Derek craned his neck, struggling to see something more than the ties that ran down the back of her gown. Everything was above him and faraway; he kept company with the fallen plaster, the chunks of debris that littered the ground. With the bright lights of the OR angled away from him, the shadows felt like ice.

"I see, um…" said Meredith, trailing off before she'd barely begun.

"Yes?" he prompted. "The dura?"

"The dura has been peeled back and tacked to the pericranium," she said in a rush. She leaned forward slightly, "And…" The air in the room felt thick as if everyone in it was collectively holding their breath. "And all the sutures have held," she continued after a moment that he suspected felt longer than it was. She glanced over her shoulder at him, her face half hidden behind the mask and glasses. "That's good right?"

It was a silly question, but he answered her like it wasn't. "That's good."

Suturing the dura. That was as far as he'd gotten before the room had started to shake. Before his instrument trays had begun to rattle uncontrollably, and little bits of plaster had rained down against his scrub cap like a hailstorm. He'd looked up to find a swiftly widening crack in the ceiling running directly above Sarah. That was the last solid memory he had before it all flared away into something bright and haunting. He could still hear the echo of frightened voices, his own gone hoarse from sudden shouting. His shoulders ached from the effort of shoving Sarah out of the way. But the ground had gone to water beneath his feet, and the next thing he knew he was flat on his back, staring up at the wide eyed faces of his staff gathered around him. Silence and the beeping of Sarah's monitors had sounded so strange after all the screaming.

He hadn't noticed his own injuries until Hess pointed them out in a taut voice like a string pulled too tight, vibrating with nerves. Even then he hadn't felt them. Didn't feel them now. They were tiny, little things. Nothing next to the fear he felt for Sarah, her small body shaking in the earthquake, jostled about with an open skull flap despite all the hands struggling to hold her steady. Nothing at all compared to the long stretch of minutes after the shaking stopped when he realized he didn't have a clue where Meredith was. If she was okay or hurt or scared. He knew now she had been scared. That much had been a given the moment he looked into her eyes and saw all the things she was struggling to keep inside herself.

"Are you alright, Dr. Shepherd?" asked the nurse stationed at his leg, jolting him out of his thoughts.

"Of course I'm alright."

"You were shaking…" she said, scooting closer and patting his thigh.

"I'm fine," he said crossly. It was bad enough having her hovering over him like some troublesome fly he wasn't allowed to swat away. He wasn't about to be mothered by someone half his age too.

He scowled and turned his attention back to Meredith instead. She was double and triple checking the pericranial sutures, and he knew it was just because it was as close as she could get to fidgeting without a watch to wind in circles around her wrist or anything to drum her fingers against. He cleared his throat, "Before you can insert the needles for the injection, you need to create a path for them." She nodded her head as he spoke, and for a moment, it almost felt like normal. Like this was any other day, and he wasn't lying crumpled on the floor but stood right next to her, teaching her. "How do you do that?" he asked. She always responded well to being led by questions, and it never stopped delighting him to see how smart she was.

This was no exception. "Retract the posterior parietal cortex," she said at once. "To expose the tumor."

He grinned. "Exactly."

"Okay," she said, letting out her breath in a low whistle. She was studying the scans of Sarah's brain taken after the child had been injected with an iodine dye; color streamed through the blood vessels in the brain, offering precise visualization of the tumor. "I need to…" She hesitated a moment, and he waited with bated breath. He could tell her. He knew those scans like the back of his hand. But backseat cutting helped no one, and it would do nothing for her confidence. And so Derek sat still, trying not to shiver in the freezing room, and waited for her to speak. "To…" she said again. "To retract along the sylvian fissure and follow that down the middle cerebral artery." She cast another quick glance at him, and Derek nodded.

"Yes," he said. "That's right."

But her voice was uncertain when she asked for a retractor, and she hesitated a long time just running her gloved fingertips up and down the strip of metal.

"You want to bend it," he told her. "Not too much. Just gently, to follow the shape of the brain." She angled her body so he could see what she did, her hands moving to match his words. The retractor bent slowly into the sort of curve he would've created himself. "That's good," he said. "Perfect. Just like that."

She raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"Really," said Derek.

"Okay…" She turned back around, her voice a whisper. "Retracting the posterior parietal cortex." He couldn't see her hands as she finally moved to retract Sarah's brain, but he could see the tension she held in her shoulders. She would be incredibly sore tomorrow if she stood like that for long, but he didn't dare tell her to relax. It was the surest way he knew of to keep nervous hands steady, and her body had found it for her as surely as his own had when he was first starting out as a neurosurgical resident. She would have to be sore tomorrow.

"It's self retaining," he added. "So just keep the proximal end low, below the skull flap."

"Like that?" asked Meredith.

Derek bit back a groan as he sat up a little more, ignoring the sudden dizziness that pulled at him as he strained to see. She would have to do this every ten minutes throughout the procedure. Reposition the retractor to minimize the damage done to the retracted tissue. He had to help her get it right. He blinked resolutely until the room refocused. "Yeah," he said through gritted teeth. "Hug the curve of the skull a little more. You can use some pressure."

He could see her fingers as she bent the blade slightly, twisting it down. While the way she stood was awkward, her whole body stiffened with nerves, it didn't carry to her hands. They stayed graceful, moving like they'd been made to do this. When she finally let go of the retractor, it remained in position, clinging to Sarah's skull, following the fold of the surgical drapes.

"Perfect," he said softly.

Meredith twisted around. "Really?"

"Really," said Derek. "Couldn't have done it better myself." Her eyes crinkled a little in a smile. "Now just remember to keep repositioning it to--"

"Avoid ischemia and vascular spasm," she finished for him.

"Yes," said Derek.

"I won't slide it," she added with a wink, and he had to grin. She'd assisted him often enough to hear his rant about lazy surgeons sliding their retractors multiple times. It saved a few minutes, but only at the cost of unnecessary trauma to the patient. Brain surgery was already traumatic enough on its own, and poor handling of a retractor could do a lot of damage.

Derek stared at the one Meredith had so carefully placed, meaning to admire her work, but the glint from the metal seemed suddenly ominous. He'd been almost ready to insert the retractor himself when the earthquake had hit. Had he started the surgery just a few minutes earlier, the posterior parietal cortex would've been elevated when the first vibrations hit. Sarah would've had a strip of metal rattling around inside her skull during the quake, and she would've been brain dead in a matter of moments. Derek's arms tensed, shaking with tiny tremors. He could hear his heart pounding wildly inside his head. A few minutes difference and she would've been dead. He shook a little more. It was so cold in the OR. And she would've been dead.

"Dr. Shepherd?" said the nurse, laying a cautious hand against his arm.

"Derek…" That was Meredith's voice. He could feel his pulse racing, but he bypassed the nurse to focus on her.

"What is it?"

"The retractor's in place, but I don't have…" Her voice was faint again. He'd bet anything she was chewing on her lip behind her mask. "I still don't have a clear path to the tumor."

He clenched his hands into fists to try to warm them. "That's okay," he said.

"It's…but, I can't get to…"

"You need to take the forceps," he said, cutting her worrying off before it could swell into anything more. "And dissect down through the tissue to further expose the pathway."

She hesitated. "I can do that…" It was more of a question than anything else.

"You can," he agreed. "You've helped me with this before." He still remembered teaching her how during the early days of the clinical trial. Back when "cauterize that bleeder, Dr. Grey" had been a shabby substitute for all the things they'd forgotten how to say. He'd taught her then. Showed her just how to keep the spring tension incredibly low when using the forceps. How to hold a blood vessel without damaging it. A second year resident doing one of the injections was the sort of thing that raised eyebrows, but it had been so nice to speak to her again. To teach her. She'd pulled it off too. None of the raised eyebrows could dispute that. For all the ways she wasn't Ellis, in this, there was no question. She was her mother's daughter.

"I remember," she said quietly. She drew in a deep breath. "Forceps, please."

A nurse placed the instrument in her hand, and she hesitated again, humming an anxious tuneless sound under her breath.

"Use the scans," prompted Derek.

"Okay." She glanced back up at the computer screens. "I'm looking."

"Visualize the path," he said. He started to sit up further. He should be standing next to her, guiding her with more than his memory. But pain speared his abdomen when he tried to move, and he felt suddenly, intensely nauseous. His mouth tasted wrong, bile burning its way up his throat and into his nostrils like an oil slick set on fire. Derek started to gag, and the nurse looked up from his leg in alarm.

He turned away, doing his best to disguise it as a coughing fit. Jolts of pain shot through his gut with every cough. The mask seemed to be trapping the nausea close to his skin, making it worse. For a moment, the room reeled sharply and he closed his eyes. He wouldn't vomit…

He breathed.

He was fine. Fine…

His damn babysitter was still staring at him when he opened his eyes again, but Derek looked away from her, readjusting the towel he held to his abdomen. The pain had dulled, his stomach was slowly settling. He was fine. Meredith hadn't even bothered to turn around. She just stood staring straight ahead at Sarah's scans.

Derek blinked and tried to remember; his mind felt blank. He'd been telling her to…

He'd been telling…

"Visualize the path," he repeated at last. "Use the forceps to retract the posterior parietal artery, and then dissect through the tissue."

"Just like that," she said weakly. "Cut."

"Yeah," said Derek. He drew in a shallow breath. And another. "Cut."

She bounced on the balls of her feet in time with the monitors and their steady rhythm. "Derek, are you sure?"

He understood her fear. A second year resident didn't have any business cutting into a brain by herself. It was unheard of. This was not a typical first solo surgery by any stretch of the imagination. Richard would probably be apoplectic if he knew. And yet there wasn't time to care. She was the only one who could do this, and that was all that mattered. He had no doubts even if she had enough for the both of them.

"Mmhmm," said Derek. "You'll want Dr. Hess to suction and cauterize any small bleeders for you to keep the field clear," he added, tilting his head towards the resident towering above her, ears sticking out wildly from beneath his scrub cap.

"Oh. Right. Dr. Hess, would you…" she said in a voice unused to instructing anyone other than interns.

Hess moved closer and picked up the bovie. "Certainly, Dr. Grey," he said. "I'd be happy to cauterize." If he was still nervous about the surgery, he hid it well. Derek felt a surge of gratitude for the resident. He'd always liked Hess.

"Thank you," murmured Meredith. "Okay, I'm…" She glanced once more at Sarah's scans before returning to the child's brain. There was a moment where she worked and he couldn't see. He simply sat there, lingering in uncertainty until…

"I've secured the posterior parietal artery," she announced. There was no mistaking the pride in her voice. Derek looked at the nurse beside him and grinned, for once not minding her presence.

"Good," he said warmly. "Now just go ahead. Trust your instincts. You know exactly what this looks like."

She gave a slight nod of her head and fell silent as she began to work, Hess poised at her side to assist. Derek could see only her back and the vague outline of Sarah's body obscured beneath the surgical drapes. Meredith still stood stiffly, taking twice as long as he would have to dissect down through the tissue, but Sarah's heartbeat stayed steady. Whatever she was doing up there, she was doing well.

She had repositioned the retractor once and was continuing with the dissection when the nurse who'd tended to his leg gave an anxious little cough. "Sir, if you could just lay back and let me examine the rest of your injuries now…" She spoke tentatively, as if anticipating his reply.

"That's not necessary," said Derek, still staring at Meredith's back.

"The procedure's underway," added the nurse in a hushed voice. "I doubt Dr. Grey would even notice."

He turned to frown at her from behind his mask. "I'm fine."

"But the wound to your abdomen…"

"Is shallow and has already stopped bleeding," said Derek, bouncing his uninjured leg against the floor in a restless, chaotic rhythm. He was fine. Maybe a little cold, but that was the OR's fault, not his. His injured leg was throbbing, his muscle rebelling against the scrap of metal lodged in it, but he could keep it together until the surgery was over. The last thing Meredith needed was to hear him crying out for morphine. Her confidence was building with every successful step in the procedure, but he had no delusions about her fragile sense of calm.

"No abdominal pain?" pressed the nurse, her voice even softer than before as if that would make the question less annoying. It didn't. He didn't even know this woman; if he had to be fussed over, he'd rather it be Meredith doing the fussing.

"No," he said.

"Any nausea? Or lightheadedness?"

"No."

The nurse gave a wobbly sigh. "What about--"

"If I need your help, I'll ask for it," snapped Derek, and the tone of his voice caught him off guard. It was harsh and ugly like the crunch a skull made when giving way to a pneumatic drill. He was supposed to be one of the nice guys. That was the point to the whole idiotic Dr. McDreamy thing. He was friendly with his staff. Polite. A pleasure to work with. The manners his mother taught him once upon a time had stuck. Except now he was nearly snarling at some unsuspecting nurse and sending her scooting back from him across the floor with a mumbled "yes, sir."

She resettled several feet away and started stacking the leftover lap sponges into an unsteady pile with unsteady hands. He opened his mouth, but apologies were hard to come by. All he wanted was a few moments of quiet. A few moments of rest.

"Derek?" called Meredith

"What?" he said a little wearily.

"I'm almost there! I can see the tumor now."

He tried to smile. "That's great, Mer. Keep going."

She turned to look at him, blood speckled gloves hovering in the air. "You're okay, right?" she asked. "You're, you feel…"

"I'm okay," he said quickly.

"Derek…"

He forced himself to sit up straighter. "I'm fine," he insisted. "You don't need to worry about anything but Sarah. How's she doing?"

"She's stable," said Meredith. She was still studying him as if troubled by something, and her voice took on a strange, muted tone. "I just need to…to finish dissecting the last of the tissue…" She narrowed her eyes at him, and he half expected her to hit him with a barrage of questions worse than the nurse's. Instead she sighed and nodded her head, turning back to Sarah without another word.

Derek closed his eyes the moment she resumed the surgery. His head was starting to hurt. His leg already did. The floor was uncomfortable, cold and hard and wearing into his bones the longer he sat. Something was making the room blur. Maybe it was the bright lights. Or the fact that he had nothing to stare at but Meredith's back. All the blue was overwhelming, and he closed his eyes to the confusion again and again, only opening them now and then so the nurse wouldn't use it as another pointless reason to start bothering him.

It was during one of those little stretches of closed eye time that he heard a sound that echoed oddly. It was an indistinguishable thump from somewhere beyond the OR doors. Another chunk of falling plaster perhaps. Whatever it was, it was more than enough of a reminder; there was still a world out there somewhere.

Derek turned to the nurse, finally beckoning her with a tilt of his head. She scrambled back across the dirty floor on her hands and knees, and he spoke to her in a heavy whisper. "I need you to go wait in the hall."

Her eyes widened. They were very blue and as watery as a scolded toddler's. "Did I do something wrong?"

He sighed. From up close she seemed very young, her skin dewy and free of wrinkles. "What's your name?" he asked quietly, hoping like hell he hadn't had her in a surgery before and failed to notice. Lack of recognition offended the nurses. At least he could say he'd learned that much from Rose.

But the nurse didn't seem bothered by his question at all. "It's Emily," she said with a tentative smile.

"Emily, okay. You see that woman standing there?"

"Dr. Grey?" said Emily at once.

Derek raised an eyebrow. "You know Dr. Grey?"

"Everyone knows who Dr. Grey is. And who _you_ are." She giggled, looking at him like their little exchange had suddenly made them best friends. "It's so romantic, you giving her your surgery like this."

Derek just frowned at her, unsure of what to say. "I need you to wait in the hall," he repeated at last.

"But _why_?" she moaned.

"Because Dr. Grey is a second year resident doing a procedure that is well beyond anything that would ever normally be asked of a second year resident," said Derek, looking back at Meredith. She still stood with her shoulders seized up, her body unnaturally stiff. "She doesn't need anyone storming in on her to look at a hole in the ceiling."

"But, search and rescue… There was an earthquake."

"And now there's a dying child and a terrified resident with her hand inside that child's brain," said Derek in a sharp whisper. "No one messes with her concentration. Do you understand?"

Emily blinked, eyes gone wide once more. "I'll guard the door, Dr. Shepherd," she said solemnly as if now they were not just best friends but ones who shared great and terrible secrets.

It was a relief to see her go, but Derek began to feel decidedly stupid sitting alone on the OR floor. He put up with it for awhile, watching how the jut of Meredith's elbows changed when she stopped to reposition the retractor. She hummed a little sometimes under her breath, and it made him smile. She made the same sound when she hovered over him in bed, staring down at his body as if deciding what to touch first. But eventually he got to feeling too idiotic; the head of neurosurgery was camped out on the ground like some preschooler waiting for a good game of blocks. He started to move gingerly, dragging his good leg up under his body until he was half sitting, half kneeling, splayed awkwardly across the floor. His limbs all weighed more than they had that morning.

He clenched his jaw and pushed with his hands, trying to get his uninjured leg to take his weight. Dots danced in front of his eyes, bright splashes of color that were impossible to focus on. Pain flared across his abdomen, and the room spun round and round.

"Derek?"

Meredith seemed to waver in and out as the strength bled from his arms. Her voice was razor sharp and much more high pitched than normal. He groaned, resettling against the ground.

"Are you okay?" She'd turned around again and was staring at him instead of Sarah.

_No one messes with her concentration._

"Yeah," he muttered. He readjusted the surgical towel he held over his abdomen and closed his eyes, nostrils flaring a little with every breath.

"You sound… Derek, are you sure?"

He shrugged and tried to smile. "Yeah. I'm just a little sore."

"A little sore…"

"I'm fine though," he added quickly. "It's nothing serious."

She continued as if she hadn't heard him, hands still hovering over Sarah's exposed brain. "Maybe you should take something for the pain. Is it bad? That's stupid. Of course it's bad. You have things sticking out of you. Crap, I should've got you something earlier. What do you need? Are you feeling--"

"Mer," he said, cutting her off. "I don't need pain killers. It's just a scratch."

"But…"

"Don't worry about me," he insisted, adding in the same breath, "How are you doing? How's Sarah?"

"I…" stammered Meredith. She turned back to the child.

"Do you have clear visualization of the tumor now?"

"Yeah," she said quietly. "Yeah, I think so."

"Good. Now insert and stabilize needle number one."

"Just stick it in there?"

"Mmhmm." He closed his eyes, smiling at her word choice. Beads of sweat had started to gather on his brow, dripping down his face to dangle from eyelashes and moisten the edge of his scrub cap. He ignored them. "Use the path you've made and insert the needle deep into the abnormal tissue."

"Okay," she whispered. The needle was long and slender, run through with delicate tubing, and it shook in her hands.

"Just go slowly. Use the scans to guide you if you get turned around."

She nodded her head but didn't move. "I don't know… Derek, I've only watched this."

He'd always put both needles in himself. It was tricky navigating down the tiny tunnel that led to the tumor. He held his breath when he did it like that would make it easier somehow. As if hypoxia might make for steadier hands. "Just go slow," he said again. "Hold your breath. It'll help." She could know all his stupid secrets.

"Derek, no. I don't know what I'm doing. This isn't smart."

"Sarah needs you to do this," he countered.

"Right," said Meredith. She made a frazzled sound that might've been a laugh. "Right… Sarah." She was talking with her back to him, staring down at the exposed portion of Sarah's brain. It never looked human, the bit of a person that came peeping out from beneath the bright blue drapes. Slabs of meat for butchers. Nothing like a little girl.

She turned again, craning her head back without moving the rest of her body like some bizarre, bright blue owl. "If she dies… If I do this, and she dies?"

He wanted to say that she wouldn't die. That he had optimism enough for the both of them even if she didn't know the meaning of the word. But that wasn't the question.

_She's just a patient, Derek. She's not our daughter._

"I'm not gonna blame you," he said quietly. Absolution smelled of plaster and tasted tangy like blood on the tip of his tongue. It bothered him that they had an audience for this. "You're the one keeping my promise."

Meredith closed her eyes and nodded, facing Sarah in silence. "Inserting needle number one."

"Slowly," breathed Derek even though all he could see was her back. He had to imagine the slender tube snaking its way towards Sarah's brain. "That's it. Good. Slowly, take your time." He said it anyway so she could hear something other than the silence that roared like a lion from the gaping ceiling. He said it for himself.

Time drained away from him, and Derek hovered there in a haze. Waiting. Slowly, slowly. He whispered the word.

"It's in," said Meredith, her voice faint and full of disbelief. His skin was cold and clammy beneath its sheen of sweat, but he suddenly felt very warm. "It's in, and now, now I need to stabilize it and…"

She trailed off, her hands moving quickly this time, without any hesitation. She'd done this step for him often enough, stabilizing the first needle while he moved to insert the second. They'd moved like clockwork, partners in some strange, sterile dance. She always seemed to anticipate what he needed in the OR as if each tilt of his head was a line of code only she had the key for. It would be uncanny if it weren't for the fact that he could do it too. Even now with her hands held somewhere out of sight, Derek knew the moment she had the needle stabilized. It was there in the way she relaxed her shoulders oh so slightly. In the way she tilted her head to the right just a little to ease some of the strain in her neck. She really would be sore tomorrow; she wasn't used to standing like this, the weight of a patient's life weighing down her whole body.

Needle number two went much the same at first, and Derek relaxed a little. Just enough to realize that his throat felt parched. His lips were dry and cracked behind his surgical mask. He licked them, but it did very little. He'd just started to imagine a parade of cold, cold glasses of water when the monitors went haywire, beeping frantically.

"BP's dropping," announced the anesthesiologist.

"Atrial fibrillation," added Hess as the lines on the EKG turned sharply irregular.

"I…What do I do?" said Meredith. She glanced over her shoulder at him. "Derek, what do I do?" He tried to think, but the room started wavering like the inside of a fishbowl.

"Push ten of lidocaine," said Hess with a nod to the nearest nurse. The words sounded right, like what he should've said. Meredith's voice still rained down frantic against his ears, but the ground was pitching sharply and no one else seemed to notice. "You didn't do anything wrong," added Hess. "She's a sick kid. It just happens sometimes." And that was right too. He wanted to say that to her too.

"BP's still dropping," said a nurse. "She's in v-tach."

"Give her twenty of amiodarone," said Hess. "Dr. Shepherd, any suggestion? She's ischemic." He caught the worry in the young man's voice. V-tach led to v-fib led to death. He had to think.

He gripped his forehead with his hand as if he could wring the answer right out of his brain. BP was dropping mid insertion, and that meant…

"Derek," pleaded Meredith. "Tell me what to do."

He clutched at his head that much harder, but the room still spun. BP was dropping. She had to do… _something_.

"Get the needle in," he choked out at last.

"I can't." She was shaking her head violently. "The internal cerebral artery is swelling with the change in pressure. It's blocking the needle. I'll puncture it if I keep going."

"Okay," said Derek, closing his eyes to the revolving room. It didn't matter that the nurses were spinning like tops. He needed to see what she was seeing. There was swelling in the internal cerebral artery. His heart was pounding in his head. Nausea rolled over him in waves, and summoning up a mental picture to match Meredith's words suddenly felt herculean. "Reposition the needle," he groaned. "Place it directly above the artery."

The monitors were very loud now, but he still heard her whispered "okay."

"Now rotate the needle as you push it down."

"_Through_ the artery?" she cried. "That's gonna--"

"Not through," he cut her off. "Quickly, Mer. Just do it."

She gasped in softly, and he could tell she was holding her breath. He waited, tense, for the sound of a flatline. She'd never seen him do this before.

A second stretched on and on as if it could be pulled like taffy into something endless. And then she spoke incredulously. "It rolled..." said Meredith. Derek sighed. It felt like tumbling into bed with her in his arms. "The artery. It just rolled out of the way!"

His smile was too weak to reach beyond his mask. "It did."

"Needle number two is in," murmured Meredith, still sounding like she didn't quite believe it.

"BP's returning to normal," said Hess. "We've got sinus rhythm."

She turned her head to look at Derek. "The artery _rolled_," she said again. "How did that even…"

He could count on one hand the number of residents he'd trust to pull that maneuver off, and she'd done it without so much as seeing it first. Her body was hidden by the giant gown, green eyes obscured by surgical glasses, the tumble of her hair tucked away in a scrub cap like nothing special, and yet she'd never seemed more beautiful to him than she did right then. It was a gift seeing her like this, and he swore he was falling in love with her just a little bit more.

"You did it," he said simply.

"I did it…"

"Yeah," said Derek. The room was still spinning slowly, but Meredith didn't move.

"Yeah," she echoed. "I… Wow." She nodded her head. It seemed a private gesture, more to herself than anyone else. "I need to inject the florazine to check that the tumor is isolated from the surrounding blood vessels," she said. It wasn't a question anymore, and she started talking to Hess when she turned back around, pointing out little things about the procedure Derek remembered telling her. "And now we inject the virus," she continued very matter-of-factly, and he had to grin. This really was her baby. "We have to be perfectly in sync."

It almost seemed too easy after the rest of the procedure. Derek could just see the computer monitor from his position on the floor, and he watched it track the progress of the viral cocktail rushing into Sarah's tumor. There was a single beep at the end signifying a successful injection, and that was it. No adverse reaction to the virus. No coding heart or swelling brain. For a minute, Derek didn't breathe once. He just sat there waiting for the other shoe to drop or the ceiling to split open again.

It never did.

"The virus is in," said Meredith at last, and Derek let his eyes close for three seconds. The room was a constant carousel, and all he wanted was to take her in his arms and kiss her.

"You did it, Meredith," he said softly. She just looked back over her shoulder at him and winked.

"Dr. Hess, if you can destabilize needle number two, I'll get out needle number one."

He watched through a wondering haze as she began to finally, really take charge of the surgery. She slid the needle out of Sarah's brain in a slow, graceful motion.

Sarah was safe.

He blinked wearily. His eyes closed for another four seconds. Then five. It couldn't hurt now, and he was so tired.

Six seconds. Seven. Eight.

The OR was glimmering. The colors slid together, blue and gray and white all blurring into some sort of sparkling light like water beneath the sun. It shimmered, and his hands felt cold. He gave a tired smile, eyelids drooping at the corners. It was all so beautiful.

"Derek! Derek, come on!" He'd know that voice anywhere. It was the sound of Meredith laughing. The world rolled in with a warmth like summertime, green and very fresh.

He spoke words that he hadn't planned. "Where is she? Do you have her?"

Meredith laughed again, swimming slowly into focus. Her scrubs were gone. Her hair was down, tumbling freely over her shoulders. Everything was green like a field of grass, and she was smiling. "Yeah. She's right here." And then she was hoisting someone small up onto her hip. A little thing with chubby legs and tiny fists that tugged at Meredith's shirt, tugged and held on tight.

Meredith pressed her lips to the little girl's hair, a mop of wild, blonde ringlets that felt familiar. "She's safe," she promised, and then she was walking backwards across the grass, a house looming into view behind her. It was sprawling and beautiful, and he knew without a doubt that it was theirs.

"Come on," insisted Meredith. She stopped and reached out to him with the arm that wasn't holding the child. There was a ring on her outstretched hand. A simple band without a stone. His wife didn't like fancy. She would never wear a lot of jewels.

When he tried to follow, he got nowhere. The distance remained the same.

"Derek," she sighed impatiently. "Hurry up. I've got her." She bounced the child on her hip, and the little girl laughed. He tried to see her face, but it was indistinct. Out of focus like some memory of a dream.

Meredith blurred next, and they faded away together like a mirage in the desert. The house went too, wavering in and out until his head hurt from trying to keep it there. The world turned blue and wavered some more as it grew colder. His breath was shallow, and he found it hard to breathe there under the waves.

She'd drowned once. Seen dead people down there though she wouldn't tell him why. Maybe this…

"_And now I need to suture the incision in the dura…"_

Her voice floated back to him through all the blue, all the fog. Derek blinked, and he could see her again. The grass was gone. No one was drowning. She looked small and very brave. He drew in a shallow breath that dripped into his lungs like ice water. He wondered if she was cold too.

The room was still reeling, and a niggling fear sat in the far corner of his mind quietly muttering that something was wrong. He looked at Meredith instead. She'd had a ring around her finger. Maybe. Somewhere where the grass was very green. Her stitches were tiny and delicate. He'd seen them often enough to know. And she'd had a child on her hip that she held like her own.

Her voice ran like water from a tap: repositioning the skull flap, securing with titanium screws, closing the periosteum. He heard all of it and none of it. Everything felt like dreaming. What had happened to the ring?

"It's done," she said from very far away. Her face swam in front of him. She was beaming, and he hated that the mask hid her mouth because he knew it was a smile he'd never seen before. "It's…I think she's going to be okay. I mean, it's too soon to say. She needs a CT and…" Meredith trailed off, laughing and shaking her head. The OR staff blurred around her, but she stayed put. "I think maybe she'll be okay," she continued, still laughing like she had in the grass. She was an odd mixture of confidence and skepticism, and he loved her.

It was enough to get him standing, and Derek launched himself forward, forgetful of the pain until the world flared red and his leg began to throb like a thumb struck with a hammer. Meredith stepped forward, catching him by the arm a moment before he started to sway.

"Hey, lean on me," she said. "I don't think you should be putting weight on that leg."

Some distant part of his mind that hadn't fogged over yet knew that this was where he should tease her. He wanted to point out that she was very tiny so that he could watch her get indignant. But everything had gone from red to black, and it was all he could do to stay leaning against her while he waited for the world to come back.

It did, slowly, and he shivered. He was at the end of a marathon he hadn't run.

"Derek…" The laughter was gone from her voice, and it made him sad. His wife was always supposed to laugh. An arm snaked around his back to grip his waist. Her touch was gentle, cautious of the gash in his side. "How do you feel? You don't look so good."

"Mer," he groaned and gripped her shoulder tighter. His fingers slid over a surgical gown. She was in scrubs. Her hair up, not down. There was no house here. She wasn't his wife. Facts flickered in and out like a dying bulb.

"What is it?" she asked. Her voice was low and warm and much, much gentler than he'd ever heard before.

He missed the laughter though. The grass and the child and the ring. Where were they…

"You did it," he said. "Saved Sarah." The words sounded a little slurred, but everything was a little slurred. The room. The lights. His thoughts. She was his wife. She wasn't. It was almost like being drunk. "You did it," he repeated sloppily. He staggered a little, wincing when he put weight on his injured leg. Meredith held him closer.

"Derek…"

"You're a great surgeon," he insisted. "Extraordinary. Not just because you're my…you either."

"Okay, now you're scaring me." He felt her reach up and press two fingers to the side of his throat. "You need to lie down. Right now."

"S'okay," he mumbled as spots flared up in front of his eyes. "Don't worry, Mer. I feel fine."

"No, you don't," said Meredith. "I think you're in shock." There were tears in her voice this time instead of laughter.

He tried to tell her not to cry. The only shock was where the house had gone. And the daughter. And the ring. Not to mention when they'd got them all in the first place. But the room was a kaleidoscope, all the colors blurring until everything was green again and he didn't have time to answer. It all came flickering back, and she was smiling.

Smiling with their daughter in her arms. Clinging, clinging. Everything spun.

"She's beautiful," he mumbled, but he couldn't see her face.

_What? Derek, what are you talking about?_

He smiled back at her. At all the grass. At their house on their land. At his wife.

_Someone page the Chief. Stat._

Meredith was his wife.

She wasn't.

_Derek, come on. Look at me._

Was. Wasn't. Was.

He swallowed once. His throat felt hoarse, and he struggled to speak. This was all so important and confusing, and he had to fix it.

"Marry me, Mer," he said in a whisper on a heavy breath of air. Her face changed with his words, but she was so far away again. Maybe it was a smile. He hoped it was. He was supposed to wait for an answer, he knew that. A yes.

(She had to say yes. They had a daughter somewhere where it was very green.)

If she had words for him, they were all in another room. In a language he didn't understand, strung out on that hazy border between sleeping and waiting for sleep. He wanted to wait, but the ground was flip-flopping, and whatever he clutched at, he didn't understand.

Something came rushing towards him. Black and smothering and eating up the ground. He meant to scream. She did it for him.


	16. Chapter 15

_I'm sorry this chapter is so late! It's finals at school right now, so I've been crazy busy with no time to write. Anyway, thank you for being patient and sticking with the story! I really appreciate. And thank you so much for the wonderful feedback. You guys are fantastic. I hope you enjoy the update._

-----

Thank god for Dr. Hess.

As her thoughts went, that was about it. Everything else had drained away and left this ugly, hollow mess inside her head. The OR was just this distant, blue, swimmy thing. And Derek, god. Derek. Meredith gasped each time she looked at him. She sucked down these great, shaking things that were supposed to be breaths but so, so weren't because they never seemed to reach her lungs. They died somewhere inside her throat because he was on the ground bleeding. He'd plummeted straight for it like some toppled tree. And she couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. And just, thank god for Dr. Hess because her hands were trembling so much there was no way they could do a damn thing.

Not that she could even think of what needed to be done. She had one empty mind with missing thoughts and one very damaged looking maybe-fiancé. If that was what you called it. There wasn't a good term for halfway between boyfriend and fiancé. God. He'd proposed. He'd freaking asked her to marry him and then keeled over like a dead man. Except not a dead man. She wasn't going to so much as use that word. The D word. He would be fine. _Had_ to be fine.

She scooted closer still and snatched at Derek's hand. It lay limply between her own, but she squeezed it all the same. Even if she couldn't think of a single thing to do, she could hold his hand. Meredith looked at Hess, who knelt opposite her. He had pulled off Derek's dirtied surgical gown and was easing up the bloodstained scrub top to reveal a smattering of deep purple bruises. They blossomed around the laceration like petals on some gruesome flower.

Meredith bit her lip to keep from crying. "He, he's gonna be okay, right? He's gonna be fine, right?"

"What's his blood type?" said Hess without looking up, and that wasn't an answer. It so wasn't. "Do you know it?"

"I…his blood type? He never told me. I don't, I don't know." Her eyes started to fill with tears and she squeezed Derek's hand that much tighter.

"Alright." Hess turned to one of the surgical techs, an athletic looking young man with broad shoulders and warm, caramel colored skin. "Knightley," he said. "See if the phone is working in OR three. If it is, call the blood bank and order six units of O negative. Then runto pick it up. I don't care how ruined that hallway is, you still need to run. Do you understand me?"

The young man nodded as he got to his feet. "And if the phone's dead?"

"Run to the nearest phone that works."

"It works," said a nurse as Knightley headed for the door. "I used it to page the Chief. No one's in there so we can take him straight over."

"Straight over?" stammered Meredith. "He's going straight to surgery?"

"If we can get him a surgeon," said Hess.

The first of the tears in her eyes began to trail down her cheeks. "Then Dr. Bailey, someone should page her too."

Hess was in the process of fitting an oxygen mask over Derek's head, but he nodded and promptly picked off two more of the crowd, nurses this time, with a brisk, "OR three. Page Dr. Bailey and then prep it for surgery. And someone find me a gurney."

The nurses left and then there was more open space around their fallen group. She was vaguely aware of the anesthesiologist sitting somewhere on the very edge of her vision, still in the midst of dialing back the drugs that had kept Sarah down. But she could barely think of the child with Derek lying flat on the floor. He didn't respond to the sound of her voice or open his eyes any of the countless times she said his name. He didn't squeeze back when she squeezed his hand. His skin was the color of wax paper, all the color drained away, and the oxygen mask he wore made her want to curl up beside him and cry.

She knelt there feeling sick and desperate until the sound of voices arguing in the hall jerked her head up.

"I didn't page you," said a man she swore she didn't know. His voice was low and unfamiliar; it was the second voice she knew.

"Then who's paging me to a damaged hallway when I have an entire hospital and a disaster situation to manage? If there's no need to evacuate, you didn't need to page me."

"I just said I didn't page you."

"Well someone paged me 911!"

"The Chief," said Meredith with a rush of relief. It was the first time she'd ever been genuinely glad to hear the man's voice. She pressed Derek's limp fingers to her lips, kissing his knuckles before she leapt to her feet. "I'll get him," she said, not trusting anyone else to be fast enough.

She went sprinting towards the voices. A nurse with a vaguely familiar face stood just outside the door. She had a cap in her hands as if she'd pulled it off when she left the OR, freeing her hair to fall over her shoulders in a strawberry blonde waterfall. And she was flirting obviously with a man dressed in work clothes, heavy leather boots on his feet and a tool belt slung around his waist. Meredith sped past them with barely a glance, promising herself that if that was one of the nurses who was supposed to be prepping Derek's OR, she'd kill the bad flirt with her bare hands.

"So you're saying I'm down two ORs?"

The Chief had moved on to bellowing by the time she reached the blocked hallway, and she staggered to a halt in front of him and two more men wearing the same sort of uniform as the first, these with hard hats on their heads.

The taller of the two workmen sighed and rapped on the wall with his fist. "Some of the structural supports have been weakened. It's not safe for general use. But like I said, this isn't my final report. I'm not the one who paged you. It was one of the ones back there. There's some situation going on. I've already had a man come running by."

"A situation?" echoed Richard, his voice booming loudly. "You're saying my people are back there and you're just now getting around to telling me?"

"Chief," cried Meredith before the other man could reply. They turned to face her, Richard's scowl giving way to a puzzled frown.

"Meredith? What are you doing down here? This area is off limits."

"I, Derek, he's… He was hurt in the earthquake, so I had to do his surgery for him, and now he's—"

"You did his surgery for him?" interrupted Richard.

"It was…he talked me through it. I didn't, um, it was the clinical trial. I'd already seen it."

Richard's eyes narrowed and he folded his arms over his chest. "I don't care if you've already 'seen it.' Do you have any idea what kind of liability risk comes with a second year resident performing neurosurgery? Was this Shepherd's idea?"

Meredith just shook her head frantically; it felt like something inside her was unraveling. Her words turned breathless. "I'm sorry. But he was, oh god, he was hurt, and I'd seen him do it so many times, and there was no one else to do it, and please can you just _come_!"

"What is this?" called another familiar voice. "A 911 to a hallway?"

Bailey came into view, walking with one hand on the wall to steady herself as she picked her way over the rubble. "Grey!" she added. "Care to tell me why you've decided to abandon all your interns on a day like today?"

Meredith wrung her hands together, the tears in her eyes finally overflowing to stream down her face. This wasn't right. They were wasting time. Seconds that Derek might not have.

"Apparently she's performing Shepherd's craniotomies now."

"Well it wouldn't be the first time he's let her assist," said Bailey.

"No," cried Meredith. "I did it myself. _I_ did the surgery. I did it because Derek…" She stopped and tried to gulp a breath of air. Everyone was staring at her like she was some sort of weepy freak who cried in hallways. She wiped violently at her eyes. "He was okay, but the ceiling fell and, and…"

"The ceiling fell?"

"On him," said Meredith, and with that she went from leaking silent tears to crying loud, ugly ones. "On him. And he's, please, he's not—"

"Slow down, Grey," said Bailey. "Start again. Where exactly is Shepherd?"

"OR four," she sobbed. "The ceiling fell during the quake and he got caught under it, but he was sitting up and talking, and he told me he was fine! He said he felt okay. God, I don't know why I listened to him. He just, he said…I don't…he collapsed, and now he, he…"

Now he was unconscious. He could die. And he wanted to marry her. Her maybe husband could maybe die. _Was_ maybe dying.

And she hadn't done a damn thing to save him. She didn't even know his freaking blood type.

"I was supposed to get you," she moaned, but Richard and Bailey were already making their way past the remaining rubble and past her. She followed them down the hall on legs that wobbled with every step, slipping back into the OR behind them. Someone had located a gurney and transferred Derek to it. He lay there like a ghost of himself and she rushed to his side, picking up the hand she'd been holding.

"Hey," she said as she stroked his fingers. "I'm back. And the Chief's here now. And Dr. Bailey. So you're gonna be okay. Okay?" She squeezed his hand, but his fingers stayed limp and his eyes stayed shut. "It's okay," she said in a tiny voice that barely made it past her lips. "It's okay."

"Sir," said Hess, looking up at Richard. "Am I glad to see you. He's in hypovolemic shock secondary to blunt trauma to the abdomen. The ninth and tenth ribs appear to be fractured, and he lost consciousness about three minutes ago. He's still breathing on his own, but his pulse is weak. OR three is being prepped, so we should be good to go now that you're here."

"Well done," said Richard with a nod of his head. He squeezed Derek's shoulder, adding, "We've got you, Shep."

But Meredith barely heard him. Fractured ribs. Derek had fractured ribs. She stared down at the bruises darkening his body. She'd missed that too. Every time she'd glanced back at him during Sarah's surgery his eyes had been pinched up in pain at the corners, and she still hadn't figured it out. Hadn't thought.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, and she squeezed his hand that much tighter. The floor seemed to be gone from beneath her, and the tears in her eyes turned her blind. Voices floated in and out around her, and she heard someone call to the anesthesiologist.

"Orenstein, how's that little girl?"

"She hasn't woken up yet, sir, but she's breathing on her own. She's ready to be moved to the PICU, if that's possible with the damage from the quake."

"It's not. You can barely get a person through that hall the way it is. A gurney with one very sick little girl on it is out of the question."

Someone clapped their hands together, and Meredith blinked away her tears to find Bailey picking out two nurses. "I want you both to stay in here with the child," she said. "Set this up as a temporary PICU as best you can. Dr. Orenstein, you'll need to come with us to OR three for Dr. Shepherd's surgery."

"Alright people, let's move," said Richard as the anesthesiologist got to his feet. "You heard the doctor."

And then the world was in motion.

The gurney rolled and Meredith hurried alongside it, still clinging to Derek's hand. Her throat felt like it had that one time she'd choked on an ice cube and swallowed it whole. A rush of cold and pain and disbelief. They were taking Derek to surgery. Emergency surgery. No one did a laparotomy without a CT first unless the patient literally did not have the time. Unless they'd be dead as a doornail, really freaking dead, dead by the time they got to CT in the first place.

"Grey," said Bailey. "Breathe. We've got him."

Meredith nodded but couldn't seem to find her voice. It had been taken out by the ice cube. She stared down at Derek as they rushed through the scrub room and out into the hall. His scrub cap had fallen off and his hair was a matted mess of dark curls. They stuck out at odd angles, stray pieces lying plastered to his sweaty forehead. His skin was a color she'd never seen before, off white and grayish like a dead fish. It twisted her insides up into knots and made it hard to breathe. She reached out to touch his cheek, and as she did his eyelids flickered, slitting apart to reveal the barest hint of blue.

"Oh my god, hey." She smiled at him and tried not to mind how glazed his eyes were, how distant he seemed. "You're okay, Derek. Don't worry, okay?" His eyelids flickered again and she lunged forward a little, hovering over him. "And yes. Okay? I'm saying yes."

She wanted to think it could make a difference if he woke up somewhere between life and death and had to choose, but Derek's eyes fell shut again, and she wondered if he'd even heard her.

"What was that, Grey?"

She shook her head. "Nothing. Just yes."

"Mmhmm," said Bailey. "I'm sure." She seemed about to say more, but her words were stolen away by the sound of a violent cough. And then another. The two women looked down to find Derek coughing like a jackhammer, dark red blood spewing from his lips and pooling inside his oxygen mask. From very faraway, she heard someone scream in a voice that sounded a lot like her own. And then she was sobbing and he was gone. Someone had pulled her hand from his and left her standing there as they went flying down the hall towards the open OR.

She tried to follow after them, but Bailey stopped for a second, reaching out to catch her by the elbow. "You know you can't come in. Go scrub out. I'll bring you an update as soon as I can."

And then she was gone too, vanished through the door that led to the scrub room and beyond that, the OR. Meredith stood very still. The hallway was a warzone and she suddenly felt very remote, as if she was looking down on herself from somewhere high above her body. She stood looking small in her bloodstained surgical gown, her dirty scrubs. She'd taken her gloves off when she'd first stepped away from Sarah's table, but now her hands were splattered red again. With Derek's blood. She felt someone rush past her, and it slammed her back into her body again in a way that felt wavering and much too much like being drunk.

She caught a glimpse of the back of the man who'd nearly bowled her over. Warm, caramel colored skin. The mint green scrubs of a surgical tech. Arms brimming with bags of blood. Derek's blood. She looked down at her hands again and then staggered forward, following him through the door that had swallowed Derek whole.

Bailey and Richard were both still washing their hands, and they turned around in unison at the sound of the opening door.

"Grey. You can't be in here."

"I'm supposed to scrub out," she said in a hollow voice that fell away to nothing as she looked through the glass and into the OR. Derek lay flat on the operating table. The anesthesiologist had him intubated already, the tube shoved like a stranger down his throat. A nurse was leaning over him, cutting off his scrubs with a pair of sharp, silver scissors that flashed in the light. She started to shake.

"Meredith…"

"I have to stay. He could… I, god, I have to stay. He needs me to stay."

Richard smiled sadly as he toweled off his hands. "You know we can't let you do that. Go on now."

But she didn't move. She stood rooted like a tree, staring with sightless eyes through the window as the nurse finished cutting off the last of Derek's scrubs. He was naked and alone and about to be lost beneath the impassive sea of surgical drapes. She couldn't leave him. Meredith was only vaguely aware of the looks Bailey and Richard were exchanging. They were whispering about her, but it didn't matter. She stared at Derek through the glass until Richard left the room and then it was only Bailey stepping in front of her, her freshly scrubbed hands held out in front of her body.

"Meredith."

"Please," she said as the tears came back. "I can't leave him. Not like this. Not when he's so, so… What if this is the last time I see him alive?"

Bailey shook her head. "Don't go worrying about things like that before we've even got a chance to see what damage's been done. This could all look much worse than it is."

"But…"

"The Chief sent him away when it was you, Grey, and I'm doing the same. You need to use the sink in the other scrub room."

"Go," she added in a firm voice when Meredith made no move to leave. "Don't make me get a nurse to take you. Go on. I need to get in there and help the Chief."

Meredith nodded, feeling like she was a marionette and someone else had jerked the string to move her head. She cast a final glimpse at what little she could see of Derek through the window before turning to stumble towards the door.

She wasn't sure how she made it to the other scrub room. She was staring at Derek's lifeless body and then she was at the sinks, looking through the glass at what was left of OR four. Two nurses still fussed over Sarah, but the surgery felt a lifetime ago. As if she'd lived a thousand years in the span of a few hours. Her focus drifted from dirty floor to broken ceiling and back again. To the spot where Derek had lay bleeding. And asked her to marry him.

He'd proposed. Marry me, Mer. That was what he'd said. She could still hear the hoarse way he'd whispered the words. It filled the silence and rubbed her heart raw.

She'd said yes, and instead of a ring, she had his blood splattered across her fourth finger like an engagement band. It wasn't all dry yet and it smeared a little when she rubbed at it, staining her knuckles and her fingertips. Meredith slumped to the ground without washing her hands. She fit beneath the sink like a hiding child, curling her knees up to her chest. Her head fell forward as the tears came back. Even breathing was a struggle, the oxygen shivering into her lungs and sitting there like it didn't belong.

It wasn't fair for a day to turn so fast. She'd woken up in Derek's arms. He'd kissed his way along her bare shoulder, and she'd twisted around in the nest of blankets to face him. Kissed him sleepily, asked him why he was up so early and muttered something inconsequential about needing coffee. It had all been just like it was supposed to be in that moment. His arms around her had made the world safe, but then he'd let go and everything had dissolved. The ground had gone wild, shook and sent them falling. She'd fought with her best friend and found her boyfriend lying on the ground bleeding. Or was it her fiancé now. She couldn't figure it out, and it only made her cry that much harder. He had to live. He had to sit down and explain to her how the whole proposing to engaged thing went because, really, this wasn't fair at all. She'd only just been warming up to the idea secretly inside her head when he went and sprung it on her in reality.

And then he collapsed before she could say yes, and started vomiting blood when she finally did. All because she hadn't realized what was wrong with him in the first place. When he still had time. Meredith laughed, her entire body shaking with a mixture of violent tears and bitter laughter. It drowned her worse than the bay and she shut her eyes, crying until her head started to throb and then long past it to the point where she swore her tear ducts should have run dry. Somehow, they didn't. The misery just kept on coming, leaking down her face to mix with the blood on her hands.

She had no sense of how long she'd been sitting there when someone pushed open the door to the scrub room. She didn't even look up. If they were coming to tell her that her fiancé was dead, she didn't want to know. She would just stayed hunched over under the sink forever, her head against her knees.

Whoever it was sat down beside her and laid a hand on her back. "Meredith…" Bailey's voice. Her heart lurched in her chest like it was about to burst, and she dug her nails into her palms, trying to brace herself for it. This was it. The part where Bailey said Derek was really dead. That she should've called for help sooner instead of letting it get so bad. That it was too late. There was too much damage. And they were all so very sorry that she'd killed her fiancé. Meredith choked on a sob and buried her head that much deeper, her kneecaps biting into her forehead.

Bailey's hand ran up and down her back, rubbing in slow, soothing circles. "Derek's still in surgery," she continued. "But I wanted to give you an update."

Meredith turned her head. "In surgery?" she echoed weakly. In surgery meant alive. It meant not dead. Not killed by the stupid, idiotic fiancée.

"Yes. The Chief was able to get the bleeding under control, and he's working on repairing the damage now."

"The damage," she echoed, wiping at her tears with a bloodstained hand. "How bad is it?"

"The Chief's taking care of it."

She sat up straighter and shook her head. "No. You have to tell me. You have to tell me how bad it is. I need to know."

Bailey sighed and leaned back against the sink, closing her eyes. "He's got some lacerations to the liver along with a ruptured spleen, most likely caused by the fractured ribs. Whatever fell on him hit him hard, Grey."

"Okay," stammered Meredith. Her lower lip started to tremble, and she bit down on it mercilessly. "Okay, okay, okay."

"Hey," said Bailey in a low, mothering voice. "It's under control."

"Right… Right. That's good." She scrunched up her face in an effort to keep from crying, but that sent her chin to wobbling.

"Grey?"

"At least someone figured out what was wrong," she choked out, and then her tears spilled from her eyes like the contents of a wet paper bag that had just ripped down the middle. "I was with him for almost three hours. I did an entire procedure with him lying there bleeding out. I mean, who does that? Who actually does that?"

"Don't even tell me you've been sitting in here this entire time blaming yourself."

"Well who else should I blame? I was supposed to help him and I didn't! I don't know how I didn't realize…" She shook her head again. "I didn't even think to check for fractured ribs. I thought it was superficial, that it was just a simple laceration, but I'm a _doctor_. How could I possibly think he was okay?"

"Because knowing Shepherd, that's exactly what he told you. That he felt fine."

"Yes, but that doesn't matter!" said Meredith vehemently. "I never would've just believed a patient like that. _Never_. Not without proof. A CT. I should have made him let me examine him." She choked on a sob and wiped at her eyes again, her tears smearing the blood from her fingers across her cheeks. "And now he could, he could—"

"Hold it right there," said Bailey. "That man is your boss. He is also your _loved one_."

Meredith sniffled and nodded her head. "So?"

"So? You trusted what he told you on more than one level. You are too close to Derek to be his doctor."

"But he did it for me! He _saved_ me. He got me out of the water when I was—" Her gaze flicked to Bailey and then back to her knees. "When I drowned." She stared at her dirtied surgical gown, praying that Bailey wouldn't bring up how her drowning was not so accidental. It cut at her like a knife, the knowledge that she'd done something even in a split second of stupidity that had put Derek where she was now. If he'd been even half as scared as she was… She forced herself to look up, trying to brace for a fresh wave of guilt, but her boss just smiled quietly at her.

"He got you out of the water, yes. But he was not one of the doctors on your case that day. He was in no state to be calling the shots about your care. In fact, he didn't look all that different from the way you do now."

"But he still did something! And I can't, I can't even return the favor. He saved me, and now he might die because of me."

"No," said Bailey firmly. "His injuries are not your fault." Meredith just moaned and let her head fall forward, tears dripping from her eyes to stain her surgical gown. "Come on," she continued, taking her by the arm and half lifting her to her feet. They faced the window that looked into the OR, and Bailey pointed straight at Sarah. "You did something too. That little girl has a chance to live because of you."

Meredith stared at Sarah, her small chest rising and falling with every breath. At least it still was. Derek had just about died to keep her alive. "He really wanted her to live."

"Wants. He's still alive."

"Right…"

"First solo surgery today, Grey," continued Bailey, her voice growing purposely lighter. "It's a big day."

"Yeah." She shook her head and looked down, rubbing her thumb over her naked ring finger. "Big day."

When she glanced up again, Bailey was looking at her through narrowed eyes, one eyebrow quirked like a question mark. But then she simply stepped behind Meredith and began untying the strings to her surgical gown.

"Now wash those hands," she added as she went to dispose of the used gown.

Meredith gave a dull nod, her foot hitting the petal that controlled the water more out of habit than any sort of conscious decision. She stared straight ahead, seeing nothing as she scrubbed and scrubbed at the blood on her hands. It was unpleasant; the soap was sharply antiseptic and the water was harsh and much too warm. But she barely noticed. It beat down against her skin, shriveling her fingertips like prunes until Bailey stepped forward and pulled her hands out of the water.

"Wipe your face too," she said as she handed her a damp towel. Meredith did as she said, barely blinking when it came away streaked with Derek's blood.

"Now?" she asked in a hoarse voice.

"Now, I'm going to tell you just what I told him when it was you. You need to go change out of those scrubs." Meredith stared down at her ruined clothes. They were blood spattered, the knees torn and streaked with filth from crawling along the hall. "I've got to head back in," continued Bailey as she ushered her out of the scrub room. "Why don't you find one of your friends? Yang, maybe. You could use someone to sit with while you wait."

"No!" said Meredith. "I don't want, I mean, it's fine. I'll be fine, just…" She turned in a circle, reaching up to tug on her hair, her eyes filling again with tears. "I'm fine. I'll just sit here."

"Meredith, go change. You're not going to do him any good like this."

She stopped her pacing to stare past Bailey at the door leading to OR three. "But…"

"Go on," insisted Bailey, and Meredith finally nodded, turning away from the OR to stumble down the hall.

-----

Meredith made it to the locker room without running into any of her friends, and the quiet brought her a strange sense of relief. Still, her fingers shook as she pulled her street clothes back on. It was barely halfway through her shift and she was done. Dressed like she was about to go home in a red shirt and faded jeans. She shuddered and ran a hand gingerly up and down her arm, finally feeling the scratches she'd earned from crawling along a floor covered in broken glass. It looked like she'd battled a cat and came out the loser. Slowly, she tugged her sleeves back down, wincing a little. Her back was throbbing from the surgery, but when she went to rub it she thought of Derek's warm hands working the knots from her muscles and she wanted to cry all over again.

He was going to be fine. She promised herself that again and again as she pulled on her boots and tossed her scrubs in the bin. Bailey had said "prepare yourself" a total of zero times. And _she_ had said yes. Meredith Grey, queen of all that was dark and twisty and wrong with the world, had said _yes_. He had to be okay. She couldn't turn into the next Izzie Stevens and lose her fiancé only hours after he'd proposed. She was not about to open up a Derek Shepherd Memorial Clinic and sleep with her married best friend. She didn't even havea married best friend. She had, well…she wasn't so sure she had a best friend anymore.

She looked at Cristina's locker, the clothes in it almost as familiar as her own. And then with a sigh that seemed to cut into her lungs, she left the room. The hospital was still in disarray, long stretches of hall littered with toppled supplies, their walls adorned with crooked picture frames. She felt lost with nowhere to go; it was the sound of the television that finally drew her. It played loudly in the waiting room, and she wove her way through the clusters of chairs to stand right in front of it, neck craned back to see the screen. The news was still on, and she stood and watched the onslaught. Buildings that had suffered worse than Derek's OR. Battered and bewildered people with microphones thrust in front of them. Her city, her home turned upside down and ripped in two. It made something ache deep inside her, filled the empty space, that great hollow hole of nothing that she'd been pouring herself into since the moment Derek collapsed. She brushed fresh tears from her eyes as the wrecked cars and homes and lives flickered across the screen.

The waiting room felt too empty for the tragedy with fewer people slumped in the chairs than on a usual day. They were down two ORs though. She would guess all elective surgeries had been wiped from the board. Anything that wasn't a case of immediate life or death, anyone who wasn't Derek, really, would have been postponed. While she'd been down there in the OR with Sarah, they had probably been sending all the trauma away to Mercy West. To hospitals that kept up on their repairs and didn't have floors coated in fine layers of plaster dust. And in the end, it all added up to leave her alone with a silence that turned the TV very loud. It filled her up with everything wrong, and Meredith stared and stared at it until she couldn't. She pivoted on her heel and walked away just shy of a run, slipping past the few faceless ones still waiting there, huddled over with their heads in their hands.

She walked without thinking, not realizing her destination until she came to a halt with a hand on the door to Derek's office. Meredith held her breath and twisted the handle, praying that it was unlocked. The door swung open easily, letting her into a darkened room. She didn't bother with the light switch but let the darkness lap close around her as she curled up in his chair. It wasn't the same as him holding her. It wasn't the same at all. But she pressed her palm flat to the leather like it would bring him closer and sat there for a long time, her body bunched up in misery and fear.

When she finally moved, it was to tug on the nearer of Derek's two desk drawers. It slid open easily and she turned on his desk lamp to reveal a box of paperclips, a stack of old, dog eared medical journals, and a granola bar in its wrapper. All a little out of order thanks to the quake, but still perfectly ordinary. No surprises there. She frowned and shut the drawer, scooting over to open the one on the opposite side. Out came a tidy row of files in alphabetical order for his staff. No small, fragile box made of black velvet. She sighed and closed the drawer, rolling her eyes at herself. She was actually turning into that girl. The one who went snooping in her boyfriend's stuff. Her fiancé's stuff. Whatever she was supposed to call him now, it was pathetic either way. And also quite possibly illegal what with the breaking and entering and spying. She was a spy. A miserable, snooping, fiancé killing spy. She tried to laugh at herself, but it came out sounding broken and wrong, and so she slumped back into her seat instead.

Her left hand stuck out oddly like it didn't quite belong with the rest of her body. It wasn't like she even needed a ring. She couldn't remember ever owning one in her life, and there was no need to start now. But at least it would be proof that she hadn't imagined the whole thing. It was surreal. Less than twenty-four hours ago, they'd been fighting. And now they were maybe engaged and Derek was maybe dying.

And she was going to maybe be alone. Forever.

It was her fault too. It didn't matter what Bailey said. She knew him. She knew exactly how obsessed he was with saving Sarah, even if no one else did. Obsessed enough to sit there with two fractured ribs and promise her he felt fine. That it was nothing. It was a superficial wound. Just a scratch. And she hadn't even checked. She hadn't so much as pushed up his scrub top and found the bruises for herself. Meredith shook her head and started rocking back and forth in the chair, running through the past few hours again and again in her mind.

If she'd just examined him like she was supposed to in the first place, he would've had time for scans. The bleeding would've been minimal when they caught it. He wouldn't have started coughing up his own blood. But Sarah would've died. She couldn't have done that surgery without him there to talk her through it, and if she hadn't done it… She didn't want to think about how he would have looked at her if she'd forced him to get a CT at the cost of the child's life. But if he died, oh god. He could. He really, really could, and maybe it made her a horrible person, but if she could only save one of them, she would've rather saved him. Because he asked her to marry him. And pulled her out of the water. And then again out of the shower. And loved her still even when he knew she'd done it on purpose. Not to mention she wasn't quite sure how to live in a world without him in it. If she even could… Meredith's lower lip began to tremble and she curled up again, pressing her face into her knees as the tears came back.

She cried for a long time until she felt empty on the inside. Like there was nothing where her organs used to be. Her thoughts were a patchwork of panic and pain that she sewed into her skin. She wondered if he'd gone anywhere. Perhaps the dead hospital was only for the really, really screwed up, and Derek always seemed so much more sensible than her. Maybe he was waiting someplace beautiful with lots of open land and a lake to fish in. He'd like that. Or maybe he hadn't gone anywhere at all, and he was shrunk down inside his body in some fearful place where even words didn't reach. No. She shook her head. Not possible. He was fishing or some other crap like that. Something happy, but not too happy so he'd want to come back for her. Some pond with crappy fish that didn't like to bite.

Meredith started chewing on her lower lip as she thought about their conversation in the cafeteria that morning. She should've told him all of it. That she'd come back for him because she couldn't stand the thought of being without him, and that it was only fair that he come back too if he ever had a choice to make. Then he'd have it hanging over his head, and he'd be all guilted into surviving, and that was just fine by her. She could do guilt trips if she had to. If it would bring him back. Or maybe she should have said yes a little sooner or a little louder. Maybe that would have been enough. Or maybe if she'd told him she loved him that morning instead of grumbling about coffee. Or if she had nicer hair without split ends. Or didn't snore. Or didn't make him live in a house with roommates like he was still just out of college. Maybe, if she'd done all those things, or even just one or two, maybe then he'd throw done his fishing pole and say goodbye to the crappy fish and come back to her.

If he would just live, she'd be the best freaking fiancée the word ever saw.

She scrambled out of his chair as if it had burned her and pushed it back where it belonged. Really excellent fiancées most likely did not go snooping around in their fiancé's stuff. Meredith straightened the chair out and turned off the desk lamp. It was very clearly an office that had not been spied on. Because she, Meredith Grey fiancée extraordinaire, was above such things.

She backed out of his office and closed the door, and for a moment, she could almost convince herself that it made a difference. But then the hospital swallowed her up again. It had come back to life a little in the time since she'd left the waiting room. Some of the halls seemed cleaner, and almost every other person she passed in scrubs stopped to give her a long look brimming over with pity. A few said things that sounded sympathetic and made her insides curdle and the souls of her feet itch like she would scream if she didn't start running soon. She started checking her pager again and again, pulling it from where she'd hooked it to a belt loop. But each time, it was as blank as before. And the battery wasn't dead no matter how many times she looked.

Meredith was halfway down yet another hall when she came to an abrupt stop. A familiar head of black curly hair faced away from her, and she could hear Cristina talking to two of her interns. The sight of her called back the crazy, itching panic, and before she fully realized what she was doing, she had pushed open the nearest door and slipped inside.

It was the interns' locker room. She couldn't remember the last time she'd set foot inside. It felt like a lifetime ago. Maybe two. She slumped down on the nearest bench, her back to the dingy white lockers behind her. Her head was ringing and she was grateful for the emptiness. She didn't want apologetic glances and reassurances about Derek, and she certainly didn't want to talk to Cristina so soon after their fight. She wasn't even sure what there was to say. Fake "he'll be okay's" from her person seemed unbearable. Cristina thought she'd be better off without him and now, well, now she might get her wish. Meredith shook her head, her body bowing forward as she buried her head in her hands. She was starting to feel sick from all the tears that kept finding their way out of her.

"Meredith?"

It was a quiet, tentative voice, and when she lifted her head, she found Lexie standing there poised just beyond the door leading to the bathroom. She held it half open as if she'd forgotten to let go of the handle, and her dark eyes were wide with concern.

"I, I heard about Dr. Shepherd. Are you okay?"

"Am I okay?" she echoed dully. "Derek is having emergency surgery because a ceiling collapsed on top of him, and I was too stupid to realize anything was wrong until he was ten seconds from passing out. He could die today. Right now. Maybe he already has and they just haven't paged me yet. The love of my life just…gone." She sniffled and glared up at her, adding, "So no, Lexie. I'm not okay."

"Right. Sorry. I'm sorry. That was a stupid question. Definitely a stupid question." She took a small step forward and let the bathroom door close behind her. "Do you want me to find Dr. Yang for you? Maybe she could—"

"No," snapped Meredith. "I don't want you to get Cristina. I don't want you to get anyone, okay? Just go away. Please." She added it on as an afterthought while trying not to notice the way Lexie's face had fallen.

"Right. Okay. I'll, I'll just go…"

There was the sound of another door opening and closing and then nothing. Silence. It was supposed to feel comforting, but somehow it ate at her worse than before. Meredith curled forward and pressed her head to her knees, trying to blot out the world.

When the door opened again, she didn't bother to lift her head. Some random intern did not need to see her tears. But the footsteps shuffled nearer and nearer to her until she felt the undeniable warmth of someone sitting down beside her. She tilted her head to find Lexie perched awkwardly beside her.

"Sorry," said Lexie. "I know you said to go, but…coffee." She held out a large cup stamped with the name of the vendor in the lobby. "It looked like maybe you could use some."

Meredith frowned but took it anyway, starting out with a tiny, tentative sip. It tasted black and biting on her tongue, and when she swallowed the warmth of it soothed her throat after all the crying that had torn it apart. She sighed and took another sip.

"I got it black. I, well, I remembered that was how you drank it. Or at least that's how you did that morning when I slept over at your house."

"What?"

"The day you made breakfast, the eggs. You had coffee and it was, it was black."

"Oh."

"And…I'm a freak for noticing that. And an even bigger freak for remembering it." Lexie flushed bright red and got to her feet. "So I'm just gonna go now and—"

"Stay."

"Stay? Really? You, you want me to stay?"

Meredith started to shrug but then nodded her head, staring resolutely down at her feet.

"Okay," said Lexie in a quiet, wondering voice. She eased back onto the bench, a small smile on her face. Meredith sighed and looked at her. She didn't have the energy for a smile herself, but she took another sip of her coffee, relaxing a little as the warmth washed down her throat. For some reason, the emptiness in her chest felt a little less vast.

"I think he's going to be okay," continued Lexie. "I have a good feeling."

Meredith said nothing, and when Lexie was met with silence she seemed to decide against saying anything else. They sat together, Meredith staring straight ahead pretending not to notice the glances Lexie continually cast in her direction. They were a bizarre mixture of hesitant and eager, but they didn't annoy her as much as she thought they would. There was something oddly comforting about having someone sit beside her, and she made it to the bottom of her coffee cup without checking her watch or pager once.

They were lingering still in silence when it finally went off. Meredith jumped, the cup falling to land forgotten by her feet. She pulled her pager from the waistband of her jeans and squinted down at the tiny screen.

"Bailey," she said, feeling all the hope and fear come back in one giant lump that lodged itself in her throat. She stood and pushed the hair out of her eyes.

Lexie got up as well. "Do you, do you want me to come with?"

"No," said Meredith, already halfway to the door. She paused and looked back at Lexie standing there beside the bench and the fallen coffee cup. "But thank you," she said, finally managing a small smile. "For staying."

She slipped out of the locker room and broke into a run, not caring how ridiculous she looked charging down the hall. Her heart was just about crashing into her ribcage with every beat and the world was a blur, but she just kept going and going in a constant sprint of he had to be alive until she crashed straight into Bailey.

"Whoa. Slow down there, Grey."

Meredith shook her head, barely hearing her. "He's still alive," she gasped with her first breath. "Right? Tell me he's alive."

"He's alive," said Bailey. She took her by the elbow, and Meredith found herself being steered into a nearby conference room. "The surgery went well," she continued as she closed the door. "The wound to his leg ended up being fairly minor. That piece of metal just missed his femoral artery, so he got lucky there. Still, it sliced through a fair amount of muscle. There will be some pain at first as he gets back on his feet."

"And the rest of it? What…" She dragged the back of her hand across her eyes. "What did you do?"

Bailey leaned forward with a reassuring smile. "The Chief repaired the liver lacerations and he was able to salvage part of the spleen as well."

"Part of it?" she choked out, sinking down into a chair.

"He had to perform a partial splenectomy to repair the rupture."

"But he already had a puncture wound, and now, now…he doesn't have a spleen? He could develop sepsis or OPSI." She shook her head. An overwhelming post-splenectomy infection could kill in a matter of hours.

"Partial splenectomy," repeated Bailey. "With time the remaining portion of the organ will be able to fight off infection just as well as it used to."

Meredith just shook her head again. "But not at first," she said. "He needs vaccines. PPV and Hib and pneumococcus," she said, listing them off on her fingers. "And maybe influenza. I know it's not flu season, but just to be safe…"

Bailey crossed her arms over her chest. "He'll be getting them."

"What about antibiotics?" she demanded. "He should be on prophylaxis."

"He already is. Grey, we're doing our jobs here."

"It's just, sepsis…"

"Is a rare complication, not a guarantee."

Meredith nodded weakly. She bit her lip and looked away to hide the fresh tears on her cheeks. "It killed Susan."

"Meredith…" Bailey sighed and sat down beside her, her face softening as she reached out to squeeze her hand. "We're taking every precaution with him," she said, her voice turning motherly once more. "And there are no signs of infection."

"None?"

"None."

"Good, that's good," stammered Meredith as she got unsteadily to her feet. "Where is he? Can I see him now?"

"He's in recovery. And yes, you can go on in. He should be waking up soon, and I know it's you he'll be asking for."

"Okay…" She smiled through the tears that never seemed to go away no matter how many times she blinked and dried her eyes. "Okay," she said again as she turned to go.

Bailey held up a hand. "Grey," she said, sounding sterner than before.

Meredith looked back. "Yes?"

"He lost a lot of blood. Be gentle with him."

She nodded and swiped at her tears, silently ordering them to stay away this time. She could do this, be the strong one. The one who held it altogether for them. She could do anything he needed, anything he asked of her. Anything at all.

Because her fiancé was still alive.


	17. Chapter 16

_So, I was able to get this chapter up a little faster than the last one. Thanks for all the end of school year good luck wishes! And thank you for the feedback too. I know I say that every chapter, but it's true. I love hearing from you guys. It totally makes my day. So, thanks!!_

---

There was a haze, a heavy fog that hung too low. Derek languished in it with sluggish thoughts and little else. He was somewhere. Maybe he was alone. Maybe he dreamed, he did not know. Seconds were fuzzy, heavy things that hung from his eyelashes and kept them down. Breathing was the only sound. Air slithered and whooshed past his lips and he listened. Even his mouth felt far away, distant and numb. Unimportant.

It was several breaths later that he started to mind the darkness. Someone had put him here, maybe. Someone held his eyelids down. He tensed and everything hurt. This time when he breathed, his lips were cracked. His throat was raw as if the one who'd trapped him there in the cloud had taken sandpaper and skinned him from the inside out. Derek moaned and tried to think, a dull fear dripping down into his gut. From a long way off he heard a strange song without any melody, flat little beeps falling again and again.

What…

And where?

His head seemed to spin in lazy circles like a halfhearted carousel he couldn't get off of. Something deep inside of him was building into a scream, but the same weight that kept his eyelids shut had stolen his voice. He lingered in the cloud and tried to place the sounds he heard. He thought of storms and rainclouds. The constant onslaught of the rain was measured in rhythmic beeps. Wind blew past like voices and footsteps heard from far away. The storm sunk its claws in and dripped all around him. It menaced him while he couldn't see, coming like a wave to drown him.

She was the one to finally make it stop. Her voice was a blur of indistinct wordless sound. But it was her, and he loved her, and he could breathe. He wondered if the sun shone through all the rain. Maybe, maybe because her voice was light and warm and it lingered against his cheek. He fell into it, and wherever somewhere was, here or there or nowhere at all, it didn't matter anymore because she was there too.

The rain still fell like heartbeats, but now he simply listened and breathed.

Halfway through the cloud to nowhere, he felt fingers around his hand looped through with his own. They sidled into his awareness from somewhere off to the side, slipping through the haze until his hand was being held and he didn't know when it had started. Just then or if it had always been this way, a hand in his. He wanted to squeeze it and he did. Barely, but enough. Fingers weren't like eyelids then; these moved when he wanted. When the hand squeezed back he knew it was hers. She was in the cloud beside him. So close. If he looked, he was sure he'd see her, but eyelids weren't fingers and he couldn't see a thing.

The cloud was dark, and the rain was loud, and she was there. For awhile, that was all there was until her voice blossomed into words, soft and sudden and slicing through the rain.

"Hey," she murmured. "It's okay. Don't worry." Words fell like water against his face, each one splashing and pulling him closer to something he thought might be awake. "I'm here," she said, again and again. "I'm here. You're okay."

And he was okay. Because Meredith loved the rain.

The storm still spun him gently, but the cloud sitting on his head felt a little lighter. Maybe. He took a breath and tried to blink again. The world hit him in a flash of white.

His eyes watered and he shut them fast. He could feel his heart pounding against his chest, and the rain sounded wrong. Rude like a monitor. There was a stampede of feet growing louder until a hand that wasn't hers grabbed his wrist. Fingers searched, searched, searched like they were looking for something. What?

A pulse? He blinked again, risking the white, and a face loomed over him with dark eyes that he didn't know and thin brows in fine arches. The face smiled at him with too many teeth and he didn't understand. Where was he? What?

"Hey there, Dr. Shepherd," said the floating head, brandishing even more of its teeth. "Looks like you're starting to wake up a bit. Just checking your pulse here."

Pulse. He was right. Why? Why his pulse?

"What?" he groaned, tried to. It sounded garbled and wrong, and then there were even more of the teeth looming in front of him like the smile was widening still. About to swallow him.

"Are you feeling any pain, Dr. Shepherd?"

Pain? Where? He shook his head and tried to think. His mind was bitter sludge. The stranger kept speaking, but he stopped listening and then it left. It left him to the rain that wasn't rain, and the world that was too white, and where was her hand?

Desperately, he squeezed and it squeezed back. His eyes flew open again, but everything was a blur and all he wanted was her face.

"Derek," she said. He turned blinking towards the sound. His head felt like a bowling ball and he grunted with the effort of moving it even a little, but Meredith was there. She sat very close to him, her hand holding his, and she smiled when he saw her.

"Hi," she said, and then she was somehow closer still, resting her chin against a railing. "Hi," she repeated. "You're okay. Just rest."

He wanted to smile back, but his eyebrows knit together and he took a breath that hurt deep down in his ribs. "What…?" he managed at last, and even that was exhausting. His eyes fluttered open and shut.

"What happened?" Meredith finished for him. She nodded and raised an eyebrow, glancing over her shoulder and then back at him as if she too was checking out all the white, all the strange. But no one had put weights on her head, and in the time it took him to accomplish one heavy blink she'd looked away and back again and started rubbing his arm. "This is freaking you out, isn't it?"

He tightened his grip on her hand and tried to try again, but she silenced him with a shake of her head, fingers placed gently against his wrist. "It's okay," she promised. "You had surgery, Derek. It went well. We're in the PACU."

Surgery. Questions hit his lips and made it no further, fading on the tip of his tongue. His eyelids were heavy and he blinked again and again until he couldn't and they stayed shut.

When he opened them again the world was still blurry and bright. He let his eyes slide to the left and there she was again. There. Meredith. He watched her smile flicker in and out around the corners of her mouth. She'd told him something. Something had happened and she'd said…

"What happened?" he asked, and both words came out this time. They trudged along his throat until it felt skinned alive, but she must have heard because she scooted closer to him and started to speak.

"You had surgery." Surgery. Right. She'd said surgery at some point. "It went well, and we're still in the PACU. I know anesthesia sucks. I was miserable waking up from my appy, and that was, well…that was just an appy. You're doing great though. Lillian, that's your nurse, she seems pretty pleased every time she comes by and yeah, that's good."

She trailed off and lifted his hand in hers. Her lips pressed against his knuckles in several sloppy kisses, and her breath warmed his skin. "God, it's really good to see you," she whispered fiercely. "See you, see you I mean, with you looking back," she added a moment later, loosening her death grip on his hand a little. "Your eyes are really blue, you know? That's stupid. Of course you know. They're your eyes. But they're really freaking blue and I like that. And you always say nice things about how you like my hair, which is ridiculous because if you'd look closely there are about a thousand split ends there. I can't help it though. Hair salons did not create their hours with surgical residents in mind. But my point is, I'm doing the compliment thing because you always do it and it makes me happy, so I'm reciprocating but I'm skipping the hair. Not that I don't like your hair, but you already have way too many nurses ogling it, and unlike them, I am not resorting to obviousness. We're going with eyes instead. Your eyes. I like them. Especially now that they're open and looking at me, and crap, I'm kinda hoping you're still too drugged to follow at the moment because I sound like a babbling freak."

He smiled weakly, trying to sort through the blur of words. "Meredith."

"Hey," she said. Her eyes swam behind a film of unspilt tears. "Don't mind me."

"You like my eyes?" It was wearying, but he got the question out.

She smiled a little and bit her lip. "Yeah."

"I like yours too."

Meredith laughed and a single tear spilled down her cheek. She tilted her face towards her shoulder to wipe it away on her shirt. "Rest," she said as if she knew how badly his eyes wanted to close.

And so he let them for a minute. Maybe two. Three, four. How long, he didn't know, but the room was still beeping. She'd said it was the PACU. Post anesthesia care meant surgery. She'd said that too, he thought. He tried to remember, but everything seemed so remote as if he'd emptied his mind of all its thoughts. Just shaken them out like crumbs from a napkin. They were lost somewhere behind the heavy cloud that tugged at the ends of him and spilled exhaustion over every limb.

His eyes fluttered and shut.

When they opened again, it was to the sight of that strange, floating head from before with all its smiling, happy teeth. A nurse. _His_ nurse. Lillian, Meredith had said. The same thoughts from before came back, slow and sluggish. PACU. Surgery. Nurse. A big fat WHY? sat taunting him from the other side of the cloud.

His bed went up and Lillian showed him even more teeth. "Looking good, Dr. Shepherd," she said. He blinked again. The room spun more as the bed climbed higher still and he groaned, suddenly aware of the blood pressure cuff wrapped around his arm, constricting whenever it pleased. An IV needle plunged into a vein in his forearm and sat taped in place. There were heavy blankets spread over him, thick folds of forest green burying him up to his chest. And he could feel the irritating presence of a nasal cannula hooked behind his ears, the thin tubing sticking to his skin. Derek stared at all of it in dull surprise.

"Any pain yet?" asked Lillian as she glanced at the monitors and then back at him, her eyes bright beneath their thin, thin brows. She smiled too widely and he tried to think.

"I don't, ah," he mumbled, struggling to assess himself but getting nowhere. Pain. What was he supposed to feel? And where? Everything ached, but in an aimless sort of way like all the answers he didn't have.

Meredith squeezed his hand again, and that felt wonderful. He squeezed back. "No," he decided at last. "No pain."

Lillian nodded and the bed kept moving. Sitting. She was making him sit up. He let his head loll forward a bit; it weighed so much.

"Alrighty then." Lillian placed a hand on his shoulder. "Let's see if we can loosen some of that fluid buildup in your lungs." Her words swam round and round his head as she twittered on about preventing post-op pneumonia and taking deep breaths, and his eyelids fell whenever he tried to listen. He knew all this anyway, and he was just so tired. Lillian gave his shoulder an encouraging squeeze that was nothing like the way Meredith held his hand. He scowled up at the nurse, wishing it didn't feel like such an effort to shrug out of her grasp.

"A deep breath," she was saying. "Let's just start with one. Hold it for five and then go ahead and cough."

He frowned at her but did as she said, breathing. Breathing in. His chest started to hurt immediately, a steady ache worming its way through his ribs, but he ignored it to expel the air with a cough. A strangled cry ripped from his throat, and he nearly passed out from the pain. It hit him like a knife deep down between his ribs and flared out from there. He swore someone had cracked his chest in two. All at once, his stomach felt ravaged like some wild beast had made a snack of his insides while he'd been out. He fell against the raised bed gasping harsh breaths that hurt his ribs. His eyes watered and the room flip-flopped endlessly back and forth.

Meredith's hand raced up and down his arm. "Derek," she soothed. "Easy, it's okay. I know that hurt."

He blinked and gasped and blinked some more.

"Looks like some of your pain receptors have kicked in after all. I'm going to give you some more morphine right away," said Lillian. "Next time, I'll get you a pillow to hold too. That should make it easier."

The bed hummed and he went backwards, and then Lillian's footsteps faded away. He turned towards Meredith, gasping still. "What?" he croaked. "Why?"

"You have fractured ribs and a midline incision," she said in a tiny voice. "I should've, god, I should've warned you. I'm sorry." She wiped at her eyes, smearing tears across her face so her cheeks glistened. "The morphine should help. I'm so sorry. It should help."

It did.

He lay there lost to the pain until Lillian returned with his meds, until the morphine seeped into his veins and everything dimmed. He was left with sound and little else. Footsteps came and went. His monitors beeped. Voices were distant and soft and hard to place.

Fractured ribs. Surgery. Tears that glittered on Meredith's cheeks. Something had happened. Something bad. The answers danced just out of reach, blurred by the drugs, and fear slipped in instead. It went tunneling through his mind like a worm rooting deep down in the dirt. Derek tried to focus on her face, but even she was fuzzy and not quite there. The pain had slipped away, but it had taken the world with it. He clenched her small hand tighter still. It was the only thing that had stayed the same.

Why surgery?

Meredith stood up and leaned against the guard rail. When she loomed over him he didn't mind. It wasn't like the nurse, all big toothy smiles and thin, thin brows. Meredith's smile was small and troubled, and she shook her head a little as she stared at him.

"Stop stressing," she murmured, and she reached out with the hand he wasn't clutching to brush the hair back from his brow. Her fingers were gentle, her nails raked against his scalp. "Your body's still fighting off the anesthesia. It's going to take awhile to make sense of things and remember." Her hand drifted from his hair to stroke his cheek.

"I, what was…" Wrong?

She sighed and it seemed like she was holding back tears. He tried to smile. He wanted to make it all okay for her, but he was stuck there in the fog, waiting on her words. Her thumb stroked the back of his hand.

"There was an earthquake, Derek. You were injured and you, um, you needed emergency surgery. For an internal bleed." Her voice wobbled but she kept going. "You had some lacerations to your liver and a ruptured spleen. But you're doing okay now," she added quickly. "Dr. Bailey and the Chief, they were your surgeons, so you're, you're gonna be okay."

"Oh," said Derek even though his mind was still a swarm of unconnected things. A puzzle dumped on the table in a jumble, pieces everywhere, some with just the plain cardboard side showing, giving him nothing. There'd been an earthquake that had led to emergency surgery. He felt like this should bother him, but the morphine kept it all at bay.

He meant to say something more to her, but his eyes closed again and again until they simply stayed that way. Drifting, always drifting. The puzzle pieces danced around him, teasing, tormenting, flipping to show him nothing but the blank cardboard side every time he tried to focus. There was no picture there. Their edges were a mess, taunting him like open mouths, and he shivered and felt cold. Another blanket came from nowhere, and he was lost beneath it. Footsteps echoed, voices faded in and out, and still he tried to see the puzzle pieces through the fog.

It was the bed rising once more into an unasked for chair that shook him from his doze. A tray sat in front of him, and Lillian was greeting him with too many teeth and a flimsy paper cup. It sat on the tray and he peered at it through half opened eyes. Ice chips.

"Why don't you try a few, Dr. Shepherd?" she asked. "I bet your throat's feeling pretty beat up." He only nodded, grateful that this time she wasn't asking him to cough.

When she left it was him and Meredith and the paper cup. He stared at it. The pattern on the cup was blurred and beyond it the room was white and indistinct. Meredith had his left hand, and he wasn't about to let go. She was the only thing that came close to making sense anymore. The only thing that stayed and didn't change. The only good. With a groan, he hoisted his other hand the mile up from his lap. There was a pulse oximeter clipped obtrusively to his finger, and the plastic clicked against the tray. His hand felt heavy and the cup felt worse. The ice chips sat like glaciers, each one big enough to sink its own Titanic. But slowly, so slowly he took the long trek from tray to mouth, and the first one slipped past his lips.

It was cold, perfectly so. He closed his eyes and sucked on it, breaking off smithereens with tiny, cautious bites. When they slid along his throat, a very little of the ache died away. He had another and more of the dryness left his mouth.

"I had surgery," he said, speaking around the ice chip. Meredith straightened up and nodded, rubbing the back of his hand with her palm.

"Yeah. I'm sorry." Her eyes shone like pearls, and her lower lip was marked with grooves from all the times she'd bitten it. "I'm so sorry."

The ice cube bumped against his teeth and continued its slow melt on his tongue. "It's okay," he mumbled dully, trying to remember how to comfort her. "It's not your fault."

She just smiled as tears spilled from her eyes and then ducked her head as if she meant to hide them.

He was halfway through a third ice chip, still languishing there as he savored the tiny miracle it worked in his throat when it came to him. "There was an earthquake," he said with sudden confidence, not because she'd told him but because it slipped into his mind past the haze and he simply knew. "I was in the OR."

"Yes," she said a little breathlessly. "You remember that? You remember?"

"An earthquake," he mumbled. "Yeah." He gave a heavy nod, his head bowing forward but not lifting again. The thought had appeared without any effort, but it shifted like smoke, fading and drifting when he tried to concentrate. He clutched her hand to pull her close, but he was weak and lightheaded, and it was little more than a slight tug to her fingertips.

Still, somehow she understood and scooted towards him. "Hey," she said, gentle like a drizzling rain. "I'm here. Right here. There was an earthquake, but we're safe now."

"The earthquake didn't hurt you?" he asked thickly. He blinked again and tried to focus on her face. The lingering anesthesia was messing with his vision. He knew it on some distant, clinical plane, the part of him that was a doctor said it was so, but it still left him feeling useless. "You're okay?" She had to be. Because he was stuck in some strange bed with newborn eyes, struggling to lift a paper cup, and he didn't know how he could keep her safe if she wasn't.

"It didn't hurt me," she said, and his breath escaped in a whoosh of relief. "I'm fine. How are you feeling? Are the ice chips helping?" She was petting his hand, crunched up against the railing again. Her nearness helped a little, but the room was still spinning slowly, just a blur of ever revolving white.

"I'm so dizzy, Mer," he admitted, closing his eyes despite himself.

"I know," she murmured. "You lost a lot of blood today." There was a soft hum and his bed moved backwards. When he opened his eyes, he was laying flat and the room was starting to still. Meredith set down the control and looked at him with a familiar smile. "Just rest," she continued, trailing a finger down the side of his face. "Promise me you'll rest. You need to rest."

"I'll rest," he said quietly. It wasn't like his eyes were leaving him much of a choice. They shut again and again against his will, and Derek slipped in and out of the fog, barely following the noises at his bedside. He opened his eyes once to find Lillian peeling back the blankets and lifting his gown. Her voice was faraway and chipper. Just checking the drain, she said. The surgical drain, the little tube that snaked out from his incision, irritating his skin. There were tubes and leads poking him everywhere, intrusive and uninvited. The dizziness had lessened, but he was starting to feel distinctly nauseas. There was a sharp, sharp pain in his shoulders and a dull and endless ache along what he knew was the incision site. Derek stayed slumped against the mattress, weighed down by equal parts misery and exhaustion.

Lillian came and went, came and went, recording a near endless stream of information about his pulse and his temperature. His progress. When she finally made him cough again, she handed him a pillow and told him to hug it to his chest. That it would help with the incision pain. Derek tried not to mind that he had to let go of Meredith's hand to do so. He was lost without her skin against his, but he clutched the pillow and coughed.

He thought it hurt a little less than before. Maybe the pillow helped. Or maybe he was just better prepared for it this time, for feeling like an elephant had sat on him and snapped his chest in two.

"Great," said Lillian, still menacing him with all her friendly teeth. It wasn't great, it was pathetic. A simple cough had his eyes watering, his fingers digging into the pillow like a child clinging to its favorite blanket. "And now try ten deep breaths," she continued and that was even worse. He fought through them, curled over against the pillow, trying not to mind the itching, burning pain at the incision site, struggling to ignore the way his ribs seemed to break again with each new breath. He turned his face away to keep Meredith from seeing the constant flow of tears soaking his pillow.

But the tenth breath was more an anguished sob than anything else, torn from his lungs as his shoulders started to shake. There was no way she didn't hear it. When Lillian left him with a toothy good job and the bed went blissfully backwards once again, his eyes were still leaking awful, burning tears, and Meredith saw.

"Sorry," he muttered, staring intently at the ceiling. His cheeks felt red hot and slick with tears.

Meredith just shrugged. "It's okay." She leaned towards him and brushed his tears away with soft fingertips. He turned into her touch and lingered there. He was crying and she didn't seem to care.

But then he smiled, and it was her eyes that filled with tears. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so, so sorry, Derek."

He wanted to tell her that it was okay. She was there and so it was okay, but the ten deep breaths had depleted his tiny reservoir of strength. It was all he could do to lean his cheek into the palm of her hand. When he wasn't trying to actually cough around his broken ribs, the morphine helped, and the battered feeling that filled his chest and his gut receded.

He breathed easier, soft and shallow, and his eyelids started to fluttered again. He dozed somewhere on the very edge of sleep, and Meredith sat there murmuring apologies that he didn't understand. But the sound of her voice was the only thing that dulled the fear and the frustration that swept over him in waves. He'd been drinking coffee with her that morning in the cafeteria. She'd been grumpy but kind, he thought. And there'd been an earthquake at some point, but he got lost when he tried to sort things out through all the drugs. He thought for a long time about their coffee cups before realizing that was irrelevant and he really didn't care if she'd bought a medium or a large coffee that morning. But by the time he'd figured that out, his eyelids had fallen even further and he slept.

"How's he doing?"

Derek meant to blink, but didn't quite. He knew that voice.

"I, I think okay." Meredith spoke in a whisper, her words anxious and just barely reaching his ears. "He still seems confused about everything that happened, but that should fix itself as the anesthesia wears off, right?"

"It should," said the first voice. It was feminine, but warm and sturdy. Less delicate than Meredith's.

"And then he'll remember everything? Soon?"

The first voice sighed. "It's only been half an hour since he left the OR. On top of the anesthesia, his body's recovering from stage four hypovolemic shock and massive internal hemorrhage. Give him time, Grey."

"Right, right, I know. I am." There was a long pause and then, "I'm _fine_," in a voice that was a little too insistent to be true. He forced his eyelids apart and found her standing away from his bed, talking to Bailey. The other voice.

"Mer," he said, and her head snapped straight back to look at him. Her eyes were red rimmed, but she smiled brightly.

"You're awake," she said as she hurried to his side. "Dr. Bailey's here."

Bailey walked over as well, his chart in her hands and a kind smile on her face. She'd been one of his surgeons, he thought Meredith had said. After the earthquake. After… It all moved in a slow drag, pulling his brow down into a heavy frown.

"How are you feeling, Derek?" said Bailey.

He glanced back at Meredith with her red rimmed eyes and knew she'd been crying over him. "Okay," he said quickly. He tried to sit up for her sake only to blanch at the sudden pain. "I feel good," he croaked, a hot blush sweeping up his neck and over his face.

Bailey raised an eyebrow. "I know you're not telling me lies now just to try and impress Grey."

Meredith giggled and the sound was light and beautiful, and somehow that made it all a little easier.

"Kind of nauseous," he admitted, sinking back against the support of the mattress. "And, ah…breathing, it…my ribs." His thigh was throbbing too in a way that seemed to suggest another incision, but the pain there was dull, more of a nuisance than an outright misery like the fractured ribs and abdominal incision.

Bailey nodded. "I'll have Lillian add something for nausea, and we'll up your morphine as well." She scribbled a note in his chart and then looked back at him. "Have you got any questions for me?"

"How was my surgery?"

"It went smoothly," she said. "We got in there just in time. You had some liver lacerations that we repaired and a ruptured spleen, which required a partial splenectomy. The wound to your leg was very minor in comparison and should heal quickly."

A leg wound. Derek nodded. At least it meant he'd been right about the feeling in his thigh. "Good," he mumbled absently, growing distracted by the sound of Meredith sniffling. He turned his head to find her blinking as if to ward off more tears. That bothered him far more than Bailey's words, and kept him in some bizarre and hazy world of okay where he didn't quite mind that he was now missing a sizable chunk of his spleen despite the fact that, last he knew, the organ had been perfectly fine. Bailey's voice faded to the background. Something about another half hour and then they'd move him to his room. Maybe. That might have been it.

"What's wrong?" he asked Meredith as soon as they were alone again. But she shook her head as she picked up his hand, gripping it tighter and tighter still, her nails biting into his palm.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "Derek, I…I'm so sorry." Her lower lip trembled and she clamped down on it.

"Hey, it's okay." His fingers crawled a little higher to wrap around her wrist, and he rubbed at her skin with his thumb. "I'm okay."

She nodded her head vigorously. "You're okay."

"Yeah," he agreed more for her sake than his. It was still a struggle to simply stay awake. He'd been injured in an earthquake. In an OR. He closed his eyes and fought with the haze again, trying to put the day back into order. A ceiling had fallen. Maybe. Something had collapsed. And after that, after that… He tried to think, but he could feel his body sinking traitorously close to another unwelcome doze.

Derek groaned and forced his eyes open again. "What time is it?" he asked desperately. He needed something to ground him. Something to drain the heavy cloud of drugs from his body.

"Oh. It's, let's see. It's 4:34 in the afternoon."

"Okay," he muttered as he stared up at the ceiling. 4:34 pm. That didn't help. It didn't tell him anything at all.

Meredith leaned a little closer, and after a moment she added a cautious "Derek?"

"A ceiling fell on me?"

"Yeah. There was flood damage in your OR and it just…it gave out during the quake. It's crazy, right? Like the sky is falling or something."

He murmured his agreement, a smile flitting across his face. He'd been right about the collapsed ceiling. It probably wasn't supposed to be reassuring, but it meant that the thick fog that hid his thoughts was getting more and more holes.

"I mean, who lets a ceiling get that bad?" continued Meredith, her grip tight on his hand. "It's so freaking irresponsible. I don't know what the hell the Chief thought he was doing. But don't worry about the ceilings, okay?" she added abruptly. "This one's staying put. You just worry about getting better. I mean—" She paused and even though his eyes were closed, he'd bet anything she was biting her lip again. "Don't _worry _about getting better," she continued after a breath. "Because you are getting better, and that's good. It's so good, Derek. I know the whole splenectomy thing can sound kinda crazy, but I don't have my appendix anymore, and really I think that just makes us match. Well, I suppose to match you'd have to get your appendix out instead of part of your spleen, except now you're sleeping, which means I should probably shut up." She squeezed his hand. "Shutting up now."

"No," he mumbled, his eyelids fluttering a little. "You're…" He took a breath and it still hurt. "You're good company. Tell me something."

"Tell you what?"

"Anything. I like hearing your voice."

"Okay. Okay, okay. I can do that." She sniffled and something wet splattered against the back of his hand.

"Mer?" He opened his eyes and she smiled too brightly.

"Rest," she insisted, squeezing his hand. "And I'll tell you all the stupid stories you want." His eyes turned traitor again and fell shut, but even that wasn't so bad when her voice washed over him. "A story," she was saying. "Um, let's see. I told you I went to Europe before med school, right? Wait. Don't answer that. You're resting. But I did. I went with this girl named Sadie. She was my old best friend and oh, there was this one time in London at Camden Market when we…"

Her voice faded in and out around him, and he half listened half slept as she told him about concerts and bars and drunken adventures. There was no mention of the men she'd met there, though he suspected they'd been left out on purpose. Her voice was light and somewhat breathless, but the hand that held his was warm. It dulled the weariness and the pain. It helped him not mind that drugs had fogged over his memories and that his rest was disrupted what felt like every other minute as Lillian returned again and again to check his vitals. Meredith made it all a little easier.

She had him halfway through Amsterdam when Lillian came back once more to raise the bed.

"One last check," she promised when she saw his face. "And then I'll send you on down to the ICU."

Derek just nodded. The room had become less of a blur, and when he tried to force his eyes to focus, they finally complied. All the other beds were empty, which didn't feel right for the PACU. When he came by to check on his post-ops, he almost always found it full, the nurses busy, each with two, sometimes three patients in their care. Today there was only him and Lillian and Meredith pulled up close to his bed.

He blinked at the white, white room. "Quiet day," he said.

Lillian nodded, her thin brows leaping into high arches. "Place is like a ghost town thanks to the quake. The Chief had to cancel every surgery he could. There was an aftershock just after they got you settled here. A small one, but even that could've been more than enough to make a scalpel slip. Deep breath," she added as she leaned towards him with a stethoscope, and he complied, wincing a little as the pain hit him again square in his chest.

"How bad was it?" he gasped, curling towards the pillow as soon as Lillian offered it to him.

"They're saying 6.1," said Meredith softly.

"6.1," he echoed, turning towards her. That sounded familiar. He swore she'd told him that before.

_6.1, Derek. It was a freaking 6.1._

In the OR…

"If you could go ahead and cough for me now, Dr. Shepherd," continued Lillian.

He closed his eyes and gripped the pillow like a life vest. The now familiar pain speared along his incision as he coughed, and he barely heard Lillian asking for another ten agonizing breaths. He struggled through them, his eyes watering, and collapsed against the bed as soon as he could.

"Great, Dr. Shepherd. I'll see about getting an orderly to take you on up," said Lillian. He just gave a weak nod, still fighting off tears as she walked away.

"You were there," he gasped into the silence that followed, struggling to think of something other than the pain in his abdomen. "You were in the OR with me, with the ceiling…"

"I was there," she agreed. She smiled a little. "You remember?"

He turned his head towards her, blinking the last of the tears from his eyes to see her clearly. Just like the PACU had taken shape, she finally became less of a blur. Some of the fog was rolling back, and if it weren't for the exhaustion that still clung to him, the world might be about to make sense.

"You weren't hurt?" he said.

Her smile fell away and she looked down at her lap. "No, no. I'm good."

But there was a nasty cut along her brow, red and unwelcome and racing dangerously close to her eye. And when he trailed his fingers up her arm she flinched a little, teeth sinking down into her lower lip to silence a gasp.

"Mer," he said as he eased her arm towards him. Scratches covered her from wrist to elbow, some thicker than others, all of them making him ache. It looked like she'd taken a red pen and gone wild with scribbled lines. "Your arms…"

She shook her head and tugged on her sleeves. "My arms are fine."

"They're covered in scratches."

She shrugged. "There was a lot of broken glass."

"Meredith."

"Derek, were in the PACU because you just had emergency surgery. Next to that, my arms are nothing! They sting a little, but that's it. It's nothing to worry about." She kept tugging on her sleeves, stretching the fabric so it reached down past her wrists. "You just worry about resting, okay?"

His nod was reluctant, brought on more by the arrival of the orderlies than anything else. They were both short, sturdy men with familiar faces and forgotten names, and they moved him with his sheets. Lillian came over to help with the transfer from bed to gurney, the hoisting him over in some pathetic fabric sling. All the shifting made his incision throb again, but worse still was the hot blush that spread like a fever from the roots of his hair down to his toes. Derek lay there indignant, avoiding Meredith's eyes and wishing he could just shift on over himself, but his limbs felt like lead, his abdomen like it had been sliced in two. He was sweating, his eyes watering by the time they had him settled, and he was forced to ask for more morphine before they began the jostling, rattling journey through the hospital.

He'd meant to pay attention and keep his eyes open for signs of the earthquake, but the added morphine and the motion of the gurney lulled him into another drooping daze, and he missed whatever it was he was looking for. He slipped even further into a stupor once he was in the ICU, tucked into a dimly lit private room instead of the PACU's one empty, endless hall. Meredith resettled right beside him, her hand whispering through his hair, and it was easy, so easy to forget his questions and close his eyes instead.

Derek slept, his body broken and weary. When he finally awoke, she wasn't there, and a tall man stood at the foot of his bed. He said her name anyway like it would bring her back.

"You gave us all quite the scare there, Shep," said the man as he moved into the light and sat down in the chair beside his bed. Meredith's chair.

"Richard," said Derek, raising a hand to rub the sleep from his eyes. "From what I've heard, I'm supposed to be thanking you. You were my surgeon."

"Glad to finally return the favor," said Richard warmly. "How're you feeling?"

Derek frowned and tried to manage another mental catalogue. He could still feel the drugs clogging up his mind, but the events of the day had regained their structure after this latest, longer round of sleep. The fog that had followed him out of surgery had finally dissipated. "Groggy," he decided. "A bit sore. Like I'm on too many drugs."

"Tomorrow should be a little easier on you."

He nodded and stared past the chair that was supposed to be Meredith's. They sat silently for a few minutes, the only sound the slow, even beeps from the monitor as it measured out his heartbeats.

"You know, I should be asking if you were out of your mind letting a second year take over a procedure like that," continued Richard. "But she pulled it off."

"Of course she did."

The older man smiled. "Just like her mother."

The words settled heavily on Derek, calling up unwelcome memories of the diary and Meredith sobbing uncontrollably in the shower. Her body drifting at the bottom of the bay, a cold, dead little thing because of Ellis. His eyes watered and he squeezed them shut.

"Meredith is nothing like her mother," he said, his voice taking on a hard edge. Richard frowned as if he didn't know what to say, and Derek spoke again before he could. "Where is she? Where's Mer?"

"I sent her down to the cafeteria to get something to eat before it closes. I'm sure she'll be back soon." His expression was somber and he leaned forward, his hands clasped together, elbows resting on his knees. "I've never seen her so upset."

"Right now?" asked Derek, a flicker of panic sparking in his chest. "Is she okay?"

Richard shook his head. "After you collapsed," he said with a dark sigh. "She was—" His words were cut short by the sound of a doorknob turning. Both men looked up as Meredith tiptoed into the room, a cup of coffee clutched in her left hand.

"Hey," she said, her eyes going straight to Derek. "You're up."

"And you're back."

"Yeah, sorry. I thought I'd be back before you woke up. I didn't mean to just—"

"It's okay," he interrupted. "I haven't even been up long."

"Did you get something to eat, Meredith?" asked Richard as he got to his feet.

She gave a nod that seemed surprisingly curt. "Yeah," she muttered, slipping past him and into the vacated seat. For a moment, no one spoke and the room was tense with silence.

"Right, well then," said Richard, clearing his throat. "I'll leave you two alone. Take it easy, Derek."

When the door closed behind him, Meredith sagged towards the bed. She clasped his hand between her own, her fingers holding tight. Up close, the dim light from the lamp by his bed was enough to show her eyes were red rimmed, her cheeks splotchy.

His breath worried past his lips. "Meredith…"

"How are you?" she said quickly.

"Better," he allowed. "Everything is making more sense." His broken ribs were a constant, tired ache and his incision site throbbed whenever he tried to move, but after Richard's words, neither troubled him as much as the signs of fresh tears on her face. "What about you?" he asked. "How are you doing?"

She frowned at him. "I'm fine."

Derek shook his head. Richard had said he'd never seen her more upset, and that meant… He squeezed her hand. "I'm sorry if I scared you."

"It's okay," she murmured. "Don't worry. I'm okay."

He nodded despite his disbelief. There were tears glittering in the corners of her eyes, and he longed to make them go away. "And I'm sorry it took me so long to remember," he added quietly.

Meredith's breath caught and she slid closer to him. Her voice was cautious. "What do you remember?"

A grin slid slowly across his face. "Your first solo surgery," he said, the words rich with pride.

"Oh…" She bit her lip and looked away.

"You did the surgery, Meredith. By yourself."

"I did the surgery," she echoed.

"It was incredible. You saved Sarah. How is she? Has she woken up yet?"

"I, I…she's fine," stammered Meredith. "Don't worry about her, Derek. She's doing great." Her smile grew a little too wide, but he breathed a sigh of relief and wove their fingers together.

"She's doing great because she had you as her doctor."

Meredith shook her head. "Stop…"

"No, listen to me," he insisted. "I never should've kicked you off that surgery. Never should've doubted you like that, not even for a second. The trial, it's in you, Meredith. It's who you are, and seeing you just take control like that… You were telling a senior resident months away from his fellowship what to do, and you were right every time. That takes real talent. I'm so proud of you."

Her smile grew very wide and seemed to shake. "Thank you," she said as she leaned in and kissed him. "Thank you." A tear that wasn't his splattered against his cheek. Derek frowned and reached up to cup her face, but she pulled away, shrinking back into her seat.

"Is something else…" he said slowly as he struggled to sit. He was rewarded with a searing burst of pain along his incision for daring to use his stomach muscles, and he slumped against the mattress in defeat. "Something else that's upsetting you?" he said, wincing through the pain. "Not the trial?"

She shook her head. "Nothing's upsetting me."

"Meredith." He frowned and stared at her expectantly, waiting for more. It took her several minutes, but finally she spoke.

Her voice was a whisper. "Is that all you remember?"

"You did the surgery," he said, thinking out loud. "I remember talking you through it. You did the injections. They went well. You destabilized the needles. Pulled them out. And then, then…" He shook his head. It just trailed away after that, leaving him with nothing but a blur and an endless wash of gray. "That's it, I think. It all kind of fades away after that. Then I remember waking up in the PACU," he added softly. "You had my hand."

"Yeah," said Meredith. "I did." She had it still and her fingers squeezed his, but her eyes were brimming with tears and her voice shook.

"Am I forgetting something? What happened after that?"

"No, no, it's fine. It's nothing."

"What happened?"

"Nothing," she snapped. "I finished the surgery and you collapsed. That's it."

She fell silent, staring resolutely at his IV drip, her teeth massacring her lower lip. The beeping of the monitors grew very loud, and he knew that she was lying. "What am I forgetting?" he asked again. Fear crept into his voice, "Did something happen to you?"

"No," said Meredith, but she sniffled and the first of the tears flooding her eyes rolled down her cheek.

Derek stared at her helplessly. She'd done an amazing job on the surgery, he knew that, but she looked devastated. He hoped like hell he hadn't said something to hurt her feelings. That all the blood loss hadn't turned him mean or idiotic. Severe hypovolemic shock could occasionally lead to an altered mood, and if he'd made some joke about the surgery, or even worse, compared her to her mother…

"Meredith," he tried again. "If I said something, I just, I don't remember."

She shrugged and turned back to him with a tight, thin smile that meant very little. "It's nothing. Don't worry about it."

"It's obviously not nothing. Look," he continued when he was met with a heavy silence. "If I did something stupid, I'm sorry. You're an incredible surgeon, and I probably didn't even know what I was saying. It was the shock, alright?"

Meredith nodded again and wiped at her eyes. "Alright."

"Meredith…"

She shushed him with a finger to his lips. "I'm fine," she said quietly. "It's fine. Don't worry, okay? I shouldn't have even brought it up. It was a long day. That's all."

He sighed and tried to pull her closer, but that sent new spasms of pain darting across his abdomen, and he managed little more than a weak tug on her hand. "Come lie down with me," he said, but she shook her head.

"I can't," she said. "You're in the ICU, Derek. I could hurt you."

"You're not going to hurt me."

But Meredith sat stubbornly beside him, her fingers worrying at the ridges along his knuckles. "You need to rest just like you are."

"But you look…" _Like you need to be held._

"Awful, I'm sure," she said, rubbing at her splotchy cheeks. Her hair was mussed, her eyes still red. "But I'll be right here next to you. I'm not going anywhere. Everything's going to be okay," she promised, injecting a sudden, soothing strength into her voice. Her breathing was still shaky and her lower lip looked almost bloodied from the constant biting, but her hands were warm and insistent, her voice calm.

Her fingers went wandering through his hair, putting the morphine to shame as he sagged into a stupor against his will. "I'm here," she said again, pulling him closer and closer to sleep. "And I love you," she murmured. "I love you. I love you." She silenced him with a kiss when he tried to speak, and he felt the tear tracks on her cheeks.

"Mer…"

"Don't worry about me," she said. "Don't worry about anything at all. Just sleep, Derek. Sleep."

And despite all his efforts, he did.

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_And this would be the part where I say please don't hate me for having Derek forget the proposal. There's a reason for it, and I swear the reason is something other than MOAR !ANGST._


	18. Chapter 17

_So, I know I haven't updated in forever. And I'm sorry. I really, really am. Life's been keeping me very busy these days and probably will through the end of July. But...I'm updating now. And I'll update again as soon as I possibly can. Many, many thanks for being patient and awesome and putting up with my snail-esque writing speed. I hope everyone's having a great summer! _

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Meredith stood with her palm pressed flat against the glass, peering through the slats in the blinds. The room inside was dark, but she could make out the form of a woman slumped on the couch against the far wall, curled into the cushions and fast asleep. A man sat in a chair – the husband, she guessed – with his head bowed forward as if exhaustion had stolen him off to sleep while he sat vigil at his daughter's bedside. She could see Sarah too; just a tiny body dwarfed by its bed and lost beneath a sea of tubes and wires. It wasn't all that different from how Derek looked now, but thinking of him made her eyes prick with a fresh round of tears. She took a deep breath and tried to push it away. He was asleep. He was alive. Everything was okay. It was a tired mantra she'd worn into her mind over and over again throughout the long, sleepless night.

"Dr. Grey?"

She jumped, whirling around to find Hess standing beside her in a pair of wrinkled scrubs. His eyes were shadowed with sweeps of blue, the bags beneath them heavy.

"Dr. Hess…hi." Meredith looked down at her feet and then back up at the man. She felt as tired as he looked, her mind too sluggish to come up with anything else to say.

"How's Dr. Shepherd doing?" he asked.

"Sleeping," she said. At least she hoped he still was. The night nurse had been coming by on the hour to check his vitals, and he'd woken up a little each time, groggy and grumbling as fingers sought out his pulse. She wanted to be there every time he so much as stirred in his sleep, but when he'd asked her about Sarah earlier, she hadn't even known if the child was dead or alive. Sarah had vanished off her radar the moment Derek collapsed, and yet she'd gone ahead and promised him that she was okay anyway.

The guilt had hit her around midnight, forcing her to wander the PICU in search of genuine good news. Instead, she'd pressed her face to the window and found Sarah still intubated.

"Shouldn't you be doing the same?" said Hess.

She stared at him blankly. "Doing what?"

"Sleeping."

"On, no. No. I'm good," she stammered, shoving her hands deep into the back pockets of her jeans. But the lack of sleep was already getting to her. Her head was throbbing in three places and her eyes felt dried out like she'd gone too long without blinking. She frowned and glanced back at the window, adding, "I just wanted to check on Sarah. See how she's doing." It was none of his business, really, if she felt dead on her feet.

Hess took a step closer to the glass himself. "You did a good job."

"She's still intubated…"

"It's just a precaution."

"So she's still breathing on her own?" asked Meredith, trying not to stare too desperately at the child.

Hess nodded. "She is."

"But she's not waking up."

"She hasn't yet," he corrected. "It's not unheard of for a patient to have difficulty waking up after such an invasive procedure. I wouldn't be too concerned yet."

"Right, right. It's just…Beth. She was our one success, and Beth woke up that night. After her surgery, she woke up."

"I see," said Hess, rubbing his hands together. "It hasn't even been twenty-four hours since Sarah's surgery, but I admit I know very little about the clinical trial compared to you. You could always check with Dr. Shepherd in the morning. He'd know best."

Meredith bit her lip, saying nothing. There could be no asking Derek. Not now. Not when he'd almost died to keep Sarah alive. Besides, Hess seemed satisfied. He wasn't racing to Derek's hospital bed for a consult. Everything was fine. Fine, fine, fine. She told herself so again and again, ignoring the sick feeling she got in her gut every time she looked at Sarah.

"You know they were hoping to speak with you," continued Hess.

She blinked. "Who?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Roche," he said with a tilt of his head towards the darkened room.

"Oh. Why…?"

"You were their daughter's surgeon," he said as if it should be obvious.

"Right," muttered Meredith. "Her surgeon." She tried not to notice the panic that slipped under her skin like a splinter. They probably wanted to ask her what the hell she thought she was doing, taking over for the head of neurosurgery like she was anything close to the surgeon he was. Maybe they'd tell her that they were suing.

"They want to thank you," added Hess. "For stepping up under the circumstances."

"They want to thank me?" said Meredith, her voice dull with disbelief. Somehow that felt even worse than the thoughts of malpractice. She looked back into the room and shook her head. "I don't, I can't…Derek's _sick_," she said. "I can't just leave him alone to talk to them!" She cringed as the words left her lips, wondering if he was going to point out how she'd already left Derek alone to head over to the PICU, that it was how she was standing there talking to him in the first place.

Hess simply gave her a warm smile that stretched up to his ears. "They're aware your boyfriend just had major surgery," he said gently, but even that made her flinch. Her _boyfriend_. It didn't sound right anymore. She pushed at her hair and promised herself he would remember by morning. He had to. The mental fog from the anesthesia was already rolling back, and he would remember.

"They aren't expecting anything," continued Hess. "But I know it would mean a lot to them if you stopped by."

"Right," said Meredith, dragging her mind back to Sarah's parents. They wanted to thank her. For what? Putting their daughter in a coma while letting Derek almost die on her watch? She didn't deserve any praise.

"Think about it, Dr. Grey," said Hess quietly. "And send my wishes for a speedy recovery to Dr. Shepherd." And then with a nod of his head, he excused himself to check on Sarah. Meredith stayed at the window, half hoping to see her stir at the sound of footsteps. But it was her father who awoke instead, and as he shifted in his chair, she scurried away down the halls of the PICU.

She went from one intensive care unit to another, holding her breath as she eased the door to Derek's room open just far enough to slip inside. He didn't stir when she collapsed into the chair at his bedside and so she scooted closer, a tired smile on her face as she listened to the slow, heavy sounds of his breathing.

"I'm back," she murmured.

She felt too tense to sleep, and so Meredith leaned over and groped along the floor, fingers searching for the clipboard a nurse had given her earlier. It was heavy with forms she couldn't read without turning on a light or heading out into the hall, and she didn't want to either disturb Derek or leave him again. Instead, she fished her phone out of her pocket and flipped it open, hunching over the tiny rectangle of light that illuminated the page. She angled the phone with her left hand and scribbled Derek Shepherd across the line labeled patient's name with her right.

It was a slow process. The light from the phone was dim, and it gave out completely every few words, forcing her to stop and press a button to call it back. Eventually though she had name and number, address and date of birth filled out for him. It wasn't all that legible, but who took the time to write tidily when they were being admitted to a hospital anyway?

Her small sense of accomplishment died as she looked at the next line, and she let her phone go dark with a defeated sigh. Insurance information seemed like the sort of thing a fiancée should know, but she wasn't even sure where he kept his insurance card. Wallet was her first guess. But whether that was in the locker room or his office, tucked in the pocket of his jeans or stored somewhere safer while he worked, she didn't have a clue. And she was too tired and sore to get up and hunt in all the likely places. Because she was a crappy fiancée. And a crappy emergency contact person.

She hadn't even known that she was Derek's emergency contact before that evening. They'd never discussed it. But then a message had shown up on her voicemail alerting her to his injuries well after the fact, the hospital system finally catching up with reality. She'd be annoyed about that he'd failed to so much as mention she was now his freaking _person_, which was kind of a big deal in her book, but she still had Cristina's name penciled in on her own form. That brought another twinge of guilt and a hollow feeling she didn't want to examine too closely. She was the one that remembered the whole engaged thing, and yet he was the one with her name on his forms. No wonder he didn't remember proposing. She was a crappy fiancée. She'd forget being engaged to herself too if she were him.

Her eyes stung and she tried to sniffle quietly. "I'm sorry I suck at this," she whispered, setting the neglected forms back down on the floor and sagging towards the bed. She rested her head on the very edge of the mattress and tried to sleep, but sleep still would not come. The monitors were too loud and too important to tune out; the hush of his breathing suddenly too precious to ignore. And so she lay there crunched over, growing progressively more and more awake as the seconds ticked on towards morning. She pretended to be asleep when the night nurse came in again to check Derek's vitals, watching through narrow slits as he stirred and groaned and resettled.

She stayed the rest of the night at his side, holding his hand in her own. It was good just to feel his skin against hers. Just to be near him. Her fiancé. If she could call him that when he didn't remember proposing, much less her saying yes. Izzie made wishes on eyelashes, and while she couldn't bring herself to do the same, she lay in the dark and hoped with everything she had that it would come back to him. Once it was morning, once he'd slept and got a little more of his strength back, the rest of it would come back. He'd look at her with a gorgeous smile and he'd remember and kiss her, and the whole thing would be so freaking perfect it'd make her teeth ache.

At last, night gave way to day. The first hint of a sunrise began to filter in through the blinds, and she sat and watched as he stirred. His eyelids fluttered and then he was blinking at her, groggy and barely awake.

"Hey," she said.

He frowned but mumbled back. "Hey."

She leaned closer, brushing her lips against his in a faint kiss. She was afraid to press too hard. "Good morning," she added, trailing her fingers through his hair. "How do you feel?"

He just let out a low groan and covered his face with his hands as if he meant to hide from something. They were trembling slightly. Meredith frowned and went back to chewing on her lip. This was wrong. This wasn't how he was supposed to wake up at all. He was sick and grumbly and saying very little, let alone anything about proposals. He wasn't even looking at her.

"Derek," she tried when he'd laid there for a long time with his hands over his face, just crushed down into the mattress like something that had been stepped on. "You okay?"

"Okay?" he said. He let his hands fall from his face and stared at her with hard eyes. "Yeah. I'm fucking great, Mer," he said, his voice a crush of bitterness.

She blinked. That was unexpected. "I'm sorry," she added after a breath. "I know this sucks."

Derek said nothing back. He just smoothed his hand slowly across the mattress, his face scrunched up as if even that small motion was an effort. His fingers fanned out like he was searching for something.

"What is it?" she asked cautiously, tiptoeing around his sudden foul mood. "What are you looking for?"

"Nothing," he muttered, but he kept pushing his hand back and forth across the bed.

She got to her feet, peering down at him. "Derek, what is it?"

"The PCA," he said at last. He let his searching hand fall still. "It was right here."

"Um." Meredith scanned the mattress, looking for the small control that allowed him to self-administer his morphine. Of course he needed it. He'd probably woken up because he was in pain. With how exhausted he was, there was no other reason for him to be waking up so early. No alarm clock calling him to get up for work. A nurse hadn't even come in to disturb him and the light really wasn't that bright. "I don't see it," she said. "Wait…" She walked around to the other side of the bed and found it dangling over the edge by its cord. "Here," she said as she stooped to grab it, handing it back to him.

He nodded and took the PCA from her, his thumb going immediately to the button.

She crossed back to her chair, deflating into it like a popped balloon. "I'm sorry," she said again, pulling her knees up to her chest. "I know this is awful for you."

"It's fine," said Derek, but he was staring at the ceiling instead of her face.

"No. It's not fine. This is a crappy way to have to wake up."

Derek shook his head, his eyes crinkling at the corners, and she had a sudden, sinking feeling that he was trying desperately not to cry. Meredith stared down at her lap, wanting to give him a moment to collect himself if that was what he wanted. When she finally dared to look at him again, his eyes were still wet.

"What's wrong?" she tried, her voice little more than a whisper.

He frowned and a lone tear escaped to trail down his cheek. "Nothing," he muttered, but he followed his words with a frustrated sigh. "It's just that I've only been up for how long? Five minutes tops? And I'm exhausted, Meredith," he admitted in a small, crushed voice. His eyelids were already starting to droop again from the added morphine. "It's all I can do to not pass out on you here."

"That's okay," she said with a grin, trying to lighten his mood. "It's ridiculously early. All the sane people are still sleeping."

He returned her grin with a tiny smile of his own. "Then what does that make us?"

She shrugged. "A couple of crazies?" Her grin softened into a gentle smile, and she ran a hand through the tangled mess of his curls. "Go back to sleep, Derek. It's still early."

"What about you?" he mumbled, his eyes already half closed.

"I'm fine here."

"In that chair?"

"Sure. I'm flexible." Even though her innate flexibility didn't actually make the chair any more comfortable, it had apparently been the right thing to say because Derek raised an eyebrow and smirked at her. He freaking smirked like he was thinking dirty, dirty thoughts.

"I know," he said. "But you could still get into bed with me instead."

Meredith bit her lip. As much as she wanted to snuggle up beside him, she didn't dare risk it while he still had a surgical drain snaking out of his incision. He was in no condition for spooning. "Not here," she said as she leaned in to kiss him, hoping that she wasn't about to send him straight back to his bad mood.

But Derek just pouted at her. "Come on," he moaned. "I'm sick and injured and you're refusing to comfort me?"

"Sleep, Derek," she said, laughing incredulously. "We can renegotiate ways for you to feel me up once you're out of the ICU."

Derek snorted. "Bossy," he said, a happy, sleepy smile slathered across his face. She smiled back, but his eyes were already falling shut. After one final, futile blink, he slept.

But with Derek unconscious beside her, the silence turned too great. She sat and felt alone, staring at her naked left hand until her eyes burned and she had to look away. He should know by now, but the memory hadn't come back. Something was wrong, said a tiny voice. It whispered inside her head. Wrong, wrong, wrong. When memories went missing there was always a reason, and that reason was never good.

For forty minutes she sat like a statue, trying to convince herself that next time he woke, it would all come back. _Next time. _She just had to wait a little bit more. A little bit longer. But when a nurse walked in with a pleasant good morning, Derek just groaned and glowered and blinked a few times. That bright, beautiful smile of remembering never came.

She watched hopefully for some sign as the nurse came forward with her stethoscope, requesting the now all too familiar cough and deep, lung-clearing breaths that had exhausted him the day before. They would be less frequent now, but she knew someone would still come back about every two hours and demand another hellish set from him. She fought off fresh tears as she watched Derek struggle through them and then slump back against the mattress, staring sullenly at the nurse as she moved about the room. He looked as if he was about to snarl at her when she went to check and empty his surgical drain, and she didn't have to ask to know he hadn't remembered the proposal.

When the nurse finally left, Derek stared silently straight ahead, the mattress angled so that he was half sitting. A muscle in his jaw clenched every now and then. He flinched when she reached over and took his hand.

"I'm sorry," she said for what felt like the millionth time. She was pretty sure she was turning into a broken record. "Is everything okay?" she added when he just kept staring at the white wall across from him, all emptiness and sterility.

He turned to look at her with weary eyes. "Yeah," he said. "Just tired."

She nodded and tried to smile. "It could be worse," she said. "You could've gotten stuck with Rose as your nurse." She'd meant it as a joke, but somehow it came out just a little too bitter to be one. The forgotten proposal was turning her into an awful, needy mess. "I mean, if she hadn't transferred departments," stammered Meredith. "I…you know what, forget it. It's stupid, and just yeah. I'm sorry."

"It's okay, Mer," he said with a heavy sigh. Even his voice sounded tired. "I know what you meant. And you're right," he groaned. "That would've been worse." He offered her a halfhearted smile and the familiar sensation of wanting to weep came roaring back again. He punctuated his words by closing his eyes, and Meredith sat staring at him for a long time, wondering if he slept. Something's wrong, said the voice inside her head again, resuming its worrying. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

"Derek," she finally murmured, soft and cautious. His eyes fluttered open. "Sorry," she added. "I didn't mean to wake you up. Go back to sleep."

He shook his head. "Wasn't sleeping," he said. "What is it?"

"I just…" Meredith glanced away, running her tongue along her lower lip. The skin felt ragged from the constant biting. "Nothing… It's nothing."

Derek stared at her, a slight frown tugging on his brow and turning his eyes somber. "What?" He always knew when nothing really meant something. Apparently that held true even when he was doped up on morphine.

She shook her head again, but the questions kept creeping closer and closer to the tip of her tongue. Maybe, if she just gave him a push in the right direction, a hint… Maybe it would all come back again. "I, it's just," she sighed. "Do you remember now? Sarah's surgery, I mean. Do you remember the rest of it?"

Derek groped for the bed control, slowly raising himself the rest of the way up into a sitting position. "Is this about last night? Whatever was bothering you?"

"Nothing was bothering me," she said, but her voice felt tight in her throat. Too full of lies. "I was just wondering," she continued, struggling to keep each word calm. Casual. "Did you remember anything else? Anything that happened?"

He shook his head. "It's like I said, Mer. I remember everything up until you started to close. I remember being in a lot of pain. I was watching you and then…" His face clouded over. "I don't know," he said quietly. "I think I remember grass, very green grass, but it's foggy. It's hard to remember, not to mention it doesn't make any sense. I think…" He trailed off, but he stared at her intently and it made her tremble.

"You think what?" she whispered.

He ran a hand back through his hair and winced a little. As if even that was pulling on muscles that couldn't bear to be used yet. "I must have been seeing things. Hallucinating. With all the blood loss…" He shrugged his shoulders. "Did I sound delirious? What was I saying?"

"Just…" _Marry me. _She shook her head. "Just stuff. I don't know." But her voice was heavy, and she couldn't smile. He remembered _grass? _Something was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Derek pinched his brow between thumb and forefinger and took a heavy breath. When he looked up, his eyes were wet. "Meredith, what am I forgetting?"

"No," she said roughly, swallowing her tears. She was a crappy fiancée, if she could even still call herself that. Derek was suffering enough from his injuries, and yet she was finding ways to make things worse for him. "It's nothing. I just wanted you to remember the rest of my first solo surgery." She made her voice cheerful and it cut at her like a knife. "I kicked ass, you know."

"I know," he said and that just drove the knife a little deeper. Sarah wasn't even awake yet. He stared at her for a moment, his eyes dark and troubled, but he said nothing.

"It's fine, really," she continued. "Don't worry, okay?"

Derek mumbled something back, but his eyelids had started drooping again, and she watched him struggle futilely against sleep and fall into a doze. She sat there fretting, lingering in sleepless exhaustion until the door creaked open again and they both stirred.

"Crap," said Meredith as she twisted around in her seat to find Bailey standing in the doorway. She'd completely forgotten about work, but a quick glance at her watch told her she was already supposed to be busy rounding on patients and overseeing her interns. "I'll go change," she said. "Right away." But she made no move to get up.

"I called Stevens in to cover for you today," said Bailey with none of her usual severity. "I expect to see you back in scrubs tomorrow morning though."

"Oh," said Meredith. "Okay…thank you, Dr. Bailey." She smiled easily for the first time that day, the perpetual tightness in her chest lessened by a sudden rush of relief. She wouldn't have to leave him.

Bailey just gave a brief nod and turned to Derek. He'd managed to pull himself out of his doze as they spoke, and he looked distant but awake. "How are you doing this morning?" asked Bailey. "Any pain?"

"Not too bad unless I try to move," he muttered, the exhaustion in his voice dragging her straight back into bitter reality. He was sick, and he didn't remember proposing. That too. She wanted to pipe up with his forgotten memories, but the words wouldn't come. She watched Derek instead. He lay there, compliant but obviously unhappy as Bailey went through a quick check of his vitals and then peeled back the bandages that covered his abdomen.

The incision ran straight down the center of his stomach, held together by a tidy row of fascial staples pushed into his flesh. A drain snaked out of the bottom of the incision, sutured in place to collect the excess blood and pus, irritating the raw skin around the tube. It was ugly and unfair, and she could barely look without starting up a familiar struggle with her tears. She'd seen plenty of midline incisions, but none of them had ever cut at her the way Derek's did. Still, she made herself look and remember. This was all her fault.

But Bailey was nodding. "It's healing well. We should be able to take the drain out later today and that will reduce your pain significantly. The fluid output has gone down a lot since yesterday." She spoke as if everything was fine. As if he hadn't been almost dead the day before. As if he hadn't freaking forgotten proposing. Slowly, Bailey replaced the bandages, hiding the evidence of just how wrong everything really was.

"CT should be back up and running in a few hours," added Bailey. "I'm going to have you get some scans then, check for any slow bleeds we might've missed during surgery."

"Okay," said Derek quietly. His voice was dull as if he didn't really care one way or the other, but Meredith sat up straighter. He was getting scans because he hadn't had time for a single one the day before. No one really knew what the falling ceiling had done to him. If there was something still wrong with him, a reason he didn't remember. Her heart started to beat faster and she shook her head. He was fine, she'd told herself all night, but he still didn't remember, and the panicked little voice inside her head suddenly wouldn't let her rest.

She scrambled to her feet moments after Bailey had excused herself. "I'll be right back, okay?" she said, already halfway to the door before Derek had time to answer. And then she was hurrying down the empty hall, disrupting the early morning quiet as she raced to catch up. "Dr. Bailey!" she called. "Dr. Bailey!"

Bailey stopped and turned around, raising an eyebrow. "Grey?"

Meredith stumbled to a halt, catching her breath after her sudden sprint. This was stupid. So, so stupid. He was fine, but if there was even the slightest possibility that he wasn't…

"Spit it out, Grey. I don't have all day."

"Is Derek, is he getting a head scan when he goes to CT?"

Bailey just frowned at her. "We don't scan body parts for fun. Why would I go wasting his time and mine like that? The bleeding was in his abdomen."

"Right, right, I know that, just…what if he _does_ have a head injury?"

"There are no signs of one."

Meredith bit her lip and looked down at her feet. "He's not remembering things," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper.

"What is he forgetting?" said Bailey, folding her arms over her chest. "Memories from last year? Last month? Give me some specifics here."

"He's not, ah, he's not remembering what he said…what happened right before he collapsed. I've asked him and he just…" She shrugged and trailed off, biting down on her lip again.

"And what, Grey?"

"He thinks that he remembers seeing grass!" she said, throwing her hands up in the air. "That he might have been hallucinating."

"That's very possible."

"Or maybe he's remembering grass because he hit his head when the ceiling fell!" she exclaimed, feeling vaguely ridiculous.

"He didn't."

"But what if he has an intracranial bleed? It could explain the memory problems too."

Bailey sighed, her impatience growing palpable. "Have you asked him?"

"What?"

"You have the head of neurosurgery in a room right down the hall. Have you asked him his opinion on your theory?"

"No," said Meredith incredulously, taking a step back. She felt like she was unraveling, and she could feel her cheeks flush red. "Why? Why does everyone keep telling me to ask Derek things?" First Hess, now Bailey. He was sick. She shook her head. "He's supposed to be resting, not solving medical mysteries! He's a patient," she said angrily. "And if he's bleeding into his brain and forgetting things, you need to fix him!"

"He doesn't have a head injury," said Bailey, laying a firm hand on her arm.

"But he doesn't remember!"

"I know."

"And you think that's okay? It's just fine that he's forgotten a chunk of his life? People forget things because there is something _wrong_ with them," said Meredith vehemently. "When my mother forgot me, it was because she had Alzheimer's. And now Derek's forgetting this, and, and…" She shook her head, her eyes brimming with tears.

Bailey sighed again, but this time her voice grew very gentle. "It's not uncommon for patients to be unable to remember part of their accident, especially if they lost consciousness. You know this, Meredith. He lost a lot of blood. He doesn't remember what happened right before he collapsed because his mental state was already altered."

"So he really was hallucinating?" said Meredith quietly. "That's it? He was just delusional?"

"If he thinks he was hallucinating, than he most likely was."

_That's where love exists – in delusional fantasies. Real love isn't like that._

She'd told him so herself once, only now she'd give almost anything to have the fantasy back. It wasn't real. He'd been delusional. She hadn't expected it to hurt so much, but she felt like she'd been slapped across the face.

"Right, right…okay," she whispered, summoning her voice up from what felt like very far away. "I should get back." She pivoted on her heel and made it two steps down the hall before Bailey spoke.

"He proposed to you."

She froze. "What?"

"You heard me, Grey."

Meredith was silent for a long time, staring at the empty hall, the endless white walls that suddenly left her feeling very alone. She shook her head. "It doesn't matter."

"It matters a lot."

"But he doesn't remember," she cried, turning around again. "He didn't even know what he was saying! It doesn't mean anything."

"Derek almost died, and the first thing his mind went to was marrying you. You don't thing that means something?"

She breathed in sharply, wiping at her eyes with a rough hand and saying nothing.

"Talk to him," urged Bailey. "All this mess isn't doing either of you any good."

"I'm fine," said Meredith stiffly. "And he needs to heal. He feels bad enough as it is. If you think I'm going to go tell him he forgot proposing to me and make him feel ten times worse…" She shook her head. She'd already done enough damage. "I'm fine," she insisted.

Bailey's eyes softened and her voice grew gentle, almost motherly. "I know you want to be strong for him, but you don't have to be okay about all of this," she said. "If you want someone to talk to, just let me know."

Meredith looked away, suddenly acutely aware that Derek had told Bailey all about the day she'd drowned. She wanted to tell Bailey that she wasn't that person anymore. That even though everything really sucked, she wasn't going to go drown herself in a bay. She could do this. Be strong for Derek. She wasn't even going to cry about her forgotten, delusional marriage proposal. Wasn't going to care at all. Except her skin felt prickly and she couldn't seem to find her voice.

"Don't tell him," she said at last.

Bailey nodded slowly. "It's your news to tell, Meredith. Not mine." And with one last, skeptical look, she turned and walked away down the hall.

Meredith reached up and ran a hand through her hair. It was tangled and greasy, and she thought vaguely of a shower. A bed. Her limbs felt leaden, her eyes like they'd been rubbed raw. Somehow, she plastered a smile onto her face and tried for normal, but Bailey's words stuck in her mind as she stumbled down the empty hall to Derek's room.

He lay in bed staring glumly at the wall opposite him, but he looked up at the sound of the door. "Hey," he said. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," said Meredith a little breathlessly. "Everything's good."

"You sure? You took off pretty fast."

Meredith nodded. "I just…needed to talk to Bailey," she said. But Derek was regarding her with raised eyebrows, and she racked her mind for some sort of suitable explanation. "Time off," she blurted. "I wanted to see about getting more time off." At least that wasn't a complete lie. As soon as she'd said it, she knew it was true. She needed more time off. One day wasn't enough. She'd chew through her entire meager supply of vacation days to be with him for this if she had to.

"And?"

"And, um, she…she doesn't know yet. How much I can take. She doesn't know." And that wasn't quite a lie either. Even if Bailey didn't know because she hadn't been asked.

He pursed his lips together. "I don't want you to feel like you're stuck in here with me," he said. "If you want to go back to work, you should." His voice was casual, but his eyes were pools of sadness and hope, as if he wanted her to stay but didn't quite know how to ask.

"No," said Meredith quickly, shaking her head. "I don't feel stuck, Derek. Don't worry about it, okay?" She stepped closer to him until her leg brushed against the side of the bed. "I want to be here with you. I need to be here." It was the absolute least she could do after everything. She bent down and pressed a light kiss to his lips, and he smiled as she pulled away.

"Okay."

Meredith nodded. "Okay." She bit her lip and tried to smile back. "So I'm yours all day," she added, struggling to keep even a hint of sadness out of her voice. It was okay that he didn't remember. That it wasn't real. She could be okay with that. She could. Meredith pressed her lips to his again, but she pulled away abruptly as she felt her eyes start to sting. Apparently being okay with it would take some getting used to. "Do you want me to get you anything?" she asked quickly. "Some books, maybe? Or, I don't know, do you feel up for reading?"

"Um," said Derek, his expression growing thoughtful. "My laptop, actually. If you don't mind running home for it?"

"No, no, that's fine. I can do that."

"And maybe some of my pajamas," he added, plucking at his hospital gown. "Something tells me this isn't my best look." He grinned at her and, for a moment, an enormous weight slid off her shoulders. She'd love him in anything at all.

"Okay. Pajamas. Laptop. Do you want anything else?"

He grinned at her. "Just you."

"Oh…" She stood still and stared at him, blinking softly. "You…you have that," she said. Forever. _I said yes_. The words lingered right there on the tip of her tongue, but they wouldn't come. It wasn't real. "I'm gonna run home and get your stuff, okay?" she added at last as she stumbled towards the door. It suddenly felt hard to breathe.

---

When Meredith pulled up in front of her house, there was a heavy silence in the air. The house looked fine from the outside, but the quiet stayed too close to her, raising the hairs on the back of her neck. When she pushed open the front door, glass crunched beneath her feet. She shut the door behind her and found a fallen lamp, the source of the broken glass. Most off it had been swept to the side, but the sweeper hadeither been in a hurry (Izzie) or just not all that inclined to be thorough in the first place (Alex). She called their names, but the house felt empty and no one answered back. She remembered a few tentative steps later that Bailey had paged Izzie in to cover for her. Alex had likely been called in as well. She tried not to mind, but it felt like a lifetime since she'd last seen her friends. The house was too quiet, filled with a cold loneliness that lapped all around her. The damage wasn't devastating. There were no collapsed walls or fallen ceilings. It was the little things -- candles and lamps and picture frames -- that were in ruins, the small touches that had helped to keep the dust of old, unloved memories at bay. They had come crashing down.

She trudged upstairs on autopilot, pulling things from drawers and dropping them on the bed, doing all she could to ignore the mess from the earthquake. She piled up old, faded tees and pairs of well worn pajama pants with drawstring waists. Loose clothes that wouldn't irritate Derek's incision. Meredith went from the bedroom to the bathroom, gathering his toiletries as well. As soon as he felt up for taking a shower, she had no doubt he'd want the ridiculous assembly line of products he used on his hair. At least she hoped he'd be feeling good enough to want them. The pile grew and grew on their bed until she stopped abruptly and shoved everything into an old bag of hers with a halfhearted hope that none of his toiletries would leak.

Her to-do list was short, but it kept her going like a robot. Pajamas. Laptop. She hurried back down the stairs and into Derek's study, finding more and more of the mess. Meredith sank into his chair, coming face to face with a jumble of spilled pens, shards of a broken mug on the floor, and what looked like a child's scribbled drawing. Slowly, she reached out and picked it up with a trembling hand. It was waxy to the touch, the entire page coated with blue crayon, and she smoothed a fingertip along the endless swirls and scribbles. The page was creased down the middle as if it had been folded once, and when she flipped it over her eyes filled with tears as she stared at the simple inscription:

_Dr. Shepurd_

_Sarah_

Of course it was hers. She should've known. Meredith trailed a finger along each letter in turn as tears brimmed in her eyes. When she reached the end of Sarah's name, she hunched over and let herself cry for the first time that day. Her shoulders shuddered with every sob, her tears splattering the paper and her lap. She stopped only when her eyes ran dry, and then she just sat there, shaking slightly. The drawing was damp, but she smoothed it out and placed it back on Derek's desk with a trembling hand. She felt dazed as she got to her feet, as if she'd left some part of herself behind in the chair, still weeping senselessly.

Her growling stomach was the only thing about her that felt concrete; it started to voice its complaints painfully as she packed up Derek's laptop and left it waiting by the door with her other bags. She sidestepped a neglected dustpan half filled with shards of glass and made her way into the chaos of the kitchen. The earthquake had robbed the cupboard of all its plates. The floor was speckled with broken pieces of ceramic in bright blues and greens and reds. There was a ringing in her ears that she ignored as she picked her way across the floor to yank open the fridge.

Meredith ate among the broken glass, clutching a Tupperware container filled with cold pasta. She shoveled forkful after forkful into her mouth, barely taking time to chew. The meal sat like a lump in her gut, but she didn't mind. Food felt unimportant now. Her gaze darted around the kitchen as she ate, cataloguing just how much there was to clean when her gaze landed on the answering machine beside the phone. Its little red light was blinking on and off, signaling a new message. She took another bite and shuffled forward, frowning when the display indicated six new messages. They almost never had anyone but telemarketers call them on the landline.

Nerves she didn't understand had stolen her breath away, and she reached out and pressed play with a tentative hand. A computerized voice filled the room telling her what she already knew, that she had six new messages. And then the first message started to play, and the voice of a woman she'd never heard before swept over her.

_Derek, it's Mom. I know you're probably in surgery because I've been trying to reach you on your cell phone and your office line, and I haven't been having any luck. I thought I'd try here though just in case. I've been watching the news and this earthquake looks like it was pretty bad, so call me back when you get this, and let me know your safe, alright? _

Meredith stood frozen as the computerized voice returned, announcing the end of the message and options to reply or continue to the second one. Numbly, she reached out and pressed continue. This time, the voice that filled the kitchen was familiar. Sharp and businesslike. Just shy of bitchy. Nancy.

_Derek, I swear if you're out at that tin can in the woods, missing all of our calls because there's no reception in the middle of nowhere, I'm going to fly out to Seattle again and stage a wilderness intervention! Stop macking on that intern of yours and call Mom, okay? She's not going to stop worrying until you do. _

The messages kept coming one after another, all of them from Derek's family. There was a message from a sister named Kathleen. She'd heard of that one before. The shrink. Another from a soft-spoken sister who introduced herself as Julia. And a fourth who gave no name, simply saying "Hey, it's me" before launching into another half scolding, half pleading rant about Derek's whereabouts. Their voices filled the room.

_You're turning Mom into a nervous wreck, you know. If she wasn't already gray, you would've wrecked her hair color with this stunt, Derek. Call her already. And then call me. Actually, call me first. I'm always the last to know things. You can't do that to your favorite sister. I mean it though. Call us. As soon as you can._

_Are you okay?_

_Just let us know you're safe, please._

_Derek?_

The final message was from his mother again, and this time the worry in her voice was undeniable.

_Derek, I know I probably sound like one of those overbearing, nosey mothers, but this isn't like you. Sweetheart, please let me know you're okay. And Meredith, if you're there…I know we haven't been introduced yet, but Derek told me this is your home, so maybe there's a chance you're hearing this message too. If you are, please feel free to call me. Even if it's just to let me know he's in surgery so I can stop driving my daughters crazy with all my worrying. My name's Carolyn and you can reach me at 516-204-1216. I'd love to hear from you, Meredith. I hope everything is alright._

The computerized voice came back again, announcing that there were no new messages.

"Oh," said Meredith, staggering back a step. Her heart was hammering away in her throat and her hands were empty. She looked down, only just realizing she'd dropped her Tupperware container. Leftover pasta spilled across the floor. She left it there and stared at the waiting phone, Carolyn's voice ringing in her ears.


	19. Chapter 18

_So this post is way overdue. Chapter 18 took about a century to write. I blame my Grey's enthusiasm being at an all time low. I know EP's uber preggers and not around much, but Show, is it that hard to give me one measly promo pic of MerDer together? Preferably comforting each other? Because the majority of the season six news has just been oh so lackluster and blah, and I could really use a boost here. Think of it as a fangirl vitamin, k? I need them to function. Anyway, I'm so sorry for the long delay. And, if you're still patiently waiting around for this story, thank you. You are a saint. _

_-----  
_

Derek woke up slowly, still held down by the crushing weight of the drugs seeping into his right arm. Consciousness flickered in and out of his grasp like a candle caught in a draft, and he kept his eyes closed as he began a slow inventory of his body. Things still hurt, but at least it was getting easier to tolerate the constant dull murmur of pain. The searing agony that had rushed up and down his abdomen all morning had vanished after the nurse had come by to remove his surgical drain. It had been a brief process, but the memory of the tube snaking its way out of him brought back a renewed strength to the ache in his gut. At least the catheter had been taken out as well. That had returned some small shred of his dignity. Derek licked his lips and thought about sitting up, maybe requesting a glass of water. The nurse would be glad to see him upright. He was supposed to be sitting up whenever he felt equal to the challenge. Walking too, taking trips to his bathroom with the slow, shuffling, careful steps of an old man. His little shred of dignity went slipping away once more, and he lay flat, lingering in what was left of his doze. His limbs felt heavy. It was easier to rest.

At length he became aware of a rustling sound like the turning of paper. He gave an eager blink and opened his eyes, expecting to find Meredith flipping through some trashy magazine at his bedside, returned from home with his things resting at her feet. Instead he found himself face to face with Cristina Yang of all people. She sat hunched over, looking pinched and unhappy as she worked her way through a mammoth pile of charts, pausing every now and then to scribble a note with her pen.

"Hello," he said. She glanced up from her lap and nodded before simply returning to her work. "Ah, Meredith isn't here right now," he added awkwardly.

"Obviously." That time she didn't look up.

"Well if you're waiting for her to—"

"I'm not," said Cristina, cutting him off and punctuating her words with a violent click of her pen.

"Right," said Derek slowly. He scrubbed a hand over his face and tried to think. Maybe there was some perfectly rational explanation for her presence at his bedside. Damned if he could come up with it though. He sighed and blamed the drugs but didn't bother to keep the skepticism out of his voice. "Then what are you doing here?"

Cristina flicked her eyes at him. "Shouldn't you be working on sitting up or something, or are you still in the stage where you drool all over yourself?" Her words held their typical edge, but something seemed off. Even through the morphine he swore he saw wariness there, buried deep. She seemed uneasy, almost like a dog expecting to be kicked.

Derek bit back his own retort and stared up at the ceiling. This was Meredith's best friend. Meredith's best friend. He had to remind himself a dozen times before his irritation faded away, and then all that was left was tense silence and the scritch-scratch of Cristina's pen as she bulldozed her way through her charts. Derek contemplated the chipped paint on the ceiling.

The minutes grew tedious, but for the first time that day, he realized he felt completely awake. It was a small victory, but it came with a great swell of relief. Abruptly, he reached for the remote on the table beside his bed and raised the mattress until he was nearly upright. He glanced at his silent companion, promising himself that this had nothing to do with her comment, but Cristina had her head down as if his room was just another convenient study space. There was something strangely reassuring about her disinterest, and so, holding his breath, Derek eased himself the rest of the way up and away from the support of the mattress. Pain blossomed instantly along his incision, and he choked back the cry building in his throat. The room spun lazily, but he forced his stomach muscles to keep working. Inch by torturous inch he wormed his way over until he was sitting up on his own, perched precariously on the edge of his bed.

When Derek finally stilled, he was panting heavily. A faint sheen of sweat coated his skin. He gripped his knees and sat hunched over, fighting off a wave of nausea. He listened to Cristina's pen as it kept scratching across the page, and with time, it got a little easier. The pain dulled and then he was just sitting there on his own despite the six inch incision down his front. He smiled to himself and felt that little slip of dignity come drifting back like a promise.

The next time he chanced a glance at Cristina he found her staring at him. Her eyes widened as if she'd just been caught doing something wrong and he thought he glimpsed more of that same, strange wariness, but then she gave a curt nod of her head and turned back to her charts. She didn't look up again, and so they simply sat in silence together. Even sitting unaided was surprisingly wearying, but the silence was peaceful. He could almost call it companionable. However, a moment later, the door was flung open and all pretensions of peace came crashing down. Meredith stood in the rectangle of light, her hair a disheveled mess, her face unusually pale. Her eyes locked on Cristina and unbridled fury seemed to sweep over the room.

"What are you doing in here?" she demanded.

Cristina looked up and set down her pen. "Charts."

"Not anymore. Get out."

Her words were as jarring as a slap, and Derek felt an unexpected surge of sympathy for Cristina. He looked back and forth between the two women, suddenly remembering the fight they'd been having. It felt very far away, almost a lifetime ago, but apparently it wasn't.

"What?" said Cristina. "Why? I was just trying to—"

"You weren't just anything," said Meredith. "Not here. Not now. You need to leave." Her lower lip was trembling and her chest rose and fell with great, halting breaths. She still held the door open, and as she glowered down at Cristina, the other woman gathered up her charts and got to her feet. Derek stared, frozen in dull pain and disbelief on the edge of his bed, his grieving stomach muscles preventing him from shifting so much as an inch in either direction. He watched Cristina pass wordlessly through the open door with only a long glance in Meredith's direction.

She let the door slam shut once Cristina was through and seemed to deflate against it, bracing herself with one hand. Her shoulders were bowed forward and Derek thought he could make out the sound of quiet sniffling.

"Meredith?" he said softly.

She turned and he was met with wet eyes, tears glistening as they ran in rivulets down her cheeks. As she shifted, he saw that she held a phone in her other hand. She carried it awkwardly in front of her as if it was a soiled shoe she could only just bear to touch.

"What's wrong?" he pressed. "What was all that?"

Meredith shook her head. "Nothing. Just, Cristina and I aren't getting along." Her eyes darkened and her voice took on an unexpected edge. "Did she say anything to you?"

"Not really. She mostly sat there."

"Oh…" She fussed with her hair, winding the disheveled strands round and round the fingers of her free hand. The other still clutched the phone. He glanced at it and then back to her, wishing he could summon up the strength to just stand up and go take care of her. But his strength was a pathetic, dwindling thing, already worn down by the effort of sitting up straight, and his thoughts were still slippery and incomplete, discolored by the drugs.

He settled for what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "Maybe you should try talking to her," he said. She's your best friend. It might help."

Meredith slumped against the doorjamb. "I don't know that I want to talk to her."

"Then talk to me," he suggested hopefully. Even if all he was good for was sitting there like a lump, at least he could be a lump that listened. But Meredith sniffled and shook her head again.

"No. I can't. Derek, please. I don't want to talk about this." She wiped at her face with her free hand and his attention was drawn once more to the cell phone she held in an awkward death grip.

"Alright," he relented. "Fine. You don't want to talk. What's up with the phone?"

Meredith blanched and looked down at her outstretched arm as if she'd just remembered it was there. "Um, your mother," she croaked in a thin little voice he could barely hear. "She left messages at the house. Your sisters too." She closed the distance between them and dropped the cell phone onto the bed. Up close, he recognized it as his own. "I got it from your office. You have nine new messages, sixteen missed calls. I didn't check, but I'm guessing they're all from them too."

Guilt came swiftly and suddenly to rest upon his shoulders. "Damn it," he growled, picking up the phone and scrolling through his missed calls.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be," said Derek, still flipping through his phone. "I'm the one who forgot to call my own family."

"No, I…" Meredith drew in a deep breath and seemed almost to choke on it. When she spoke again, it was in a tone of voice that suggested some poor, condemned soul making a last confession. "On the machine at the house, your mother, she… She asked me to call her back. To let her know if you were, um, how you were."

He set down his phone and looked at her. "Okay."

"She gave me her number, Derek! Me! And I tried to call her back. I really, really did. I sat on the freaking floor for an hour with the spaghetti and the plates, and I _tried_."

"Meredith, it's okay. I'm not upset. I can call her myself."

"I couldn't do it though," she continued as if she hadn't heard him at all. "I'm sorry, I just couldn't do it. I didn't know what to say, and she doesn't know me or like me, and you're alive. You're alive and awake and there are phones here. Besides she'd rather hear it from you than some girl who can't, who can't even tell you—"

She stopped short and the abrupt silence left him cold and wary.

"Can't what?" he asked. He had a hunch that, whatever it was, it had something to do with the collapsed OR and the thing he'd managed to forget from the day before. All roads seemed to lead back to there. But every time he ransacked his brain he came up with nothing.

Meredith made no reply. She just stood there like a stone, studying the stretch of tile that spanned between them. "Come here," said Derek, holding out a hand. She glanced up but stayed put. "Come here," he repeated. "If you don't, I'm going to pick you up and carry you here, and I'm not sure I can do that yet without passing out."

That seemed to jar her as she sidled closer, slowly easing herself down onto the bed beside him. He snaked an arm around her waist.

"You're sitting up," she whispered like it was a wonder and a miracle.

"I am," he agreed. She nodded and sniffled and he tried his hardest not to look so sick for her. "It's okay you didn't call Mom," he said again. "She would've loved to hear from you, but it's okay. I should've thought to call her myself. Especially with the earthquake." Meredith didn't say anything back, but he could imagine the long string of denials running through her mind as she tried to work out a way where it was all her fault and she'd done everything wrong.

"You should call your mother," she said at last, and her voice was low and gravely. "She thinks you're dead." With that, she withdrew to the chair that stood in the far corner of the room directly beneath the television set.

Derek nodded and eased himself back to rest against the bed, doing his best to ignore the renewed spasms of pain. Still, he was exhausted by the time he slumped against his pillows once more, and he sat for several minutes just watching Meredith as he struggled to catch his breath. She sat with her legs crossed twice, her arms folded and folded around herself as if she was trying to become as small as possible. And it worked. He couldn't remember the last time she'd seemed so incredibly small and fragile.

"Meredith…"

She blinked once and looked up at him like a startled deer. "Should I leave?" she asked, already beginning to get to her feet. "Of course you want privacy. I should, I'll just…I'll go."

"Stay," he said. "And I was going to say take a deep breath. It'll be fine."

Meredith stiffened but stayed in her chair, tugging her knees up close to her chest. He smiled at her as he dialed his mother's number, and he could tell she was trying to smile back, but she was also rapidly tearing a hole in the worn fabric of her jeans, her fingers picking and picking at the loose threads there. He was about to tell her it was all going to be okay one more time when someone picked up the receiver on the other end.

"Hello?" It was his mother's voice. She sounded far frailer than he remembered, and he swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat.

"Hey Mom."

"Derek?" she cried. "Oh thank god. It's so good to hear your voice. I've been so worried. Did you get my messages? Is everything alright? I know I left too many, but I've been a nervous wreck ever since I heard about the earthquake. That must have been dreadful for you." Derek smiled, finding something soothing in the onslaught. His mother sure could talk when she put her mind to it.

"Yes," he said when she stopped to take a breath. "I got your messages. Actually, Meredith did." Apparently that had been the wrong thing to say because Meredith leapt a good six inches out of her chair, resettling with a grimace that suggested the seat cushion had been replaced by a bed of nails. "She thought you'd rather hear it from me though," he added hastily with an apologetic look at Meredith. "Seeing as I was up."

"Hear what from you?" Carolyn's voice grew tense once more. "Did something happen?"

He sighed heavily and tightened his grip on the phone. "It's nothing major, Ma. Don't worry. I'm alright."

"Derek Christopher Shepherd, what aren't you telling me?"

He gave a second sigh, this time of defeat, and launched into a cliff notes version of all that had happened the day before, sparing her any mention of the thing that he'd forgotten. When he had finished, there was a long pause and the sound of his mother breathing shakily.

And then, "I'll be on the next flight out."

He felt a surge of warmth at her words, but he glanced back at Meredith and shook his head. She had finished tearing a hole in her jeans and had gone on to mercilessly biting her lower lip. "You don't have to do that," he told his mother. "I'm okay. Mer's here."

Carolyn just tutted at him. "I know she's there. I'm going to be there too. Don't even try to tell me no. A ceiling collapsed on top of my son. That's a pretty big sign from the universe that I need to get out there and visit him already. Besides I want to meet this famous Meredith of yours. You've kept her hidden away long enough."

"Okay," he said softly. "I want you to meet her too. You'll love her."

"I'm sure I will, dear. And I'll see if any of your sisters can come along. I bet seeing your nieces and nephews would cheer you right up."

"Oh, Mom," he said. "I know it's been too long, but…" He hesitated, not quite sure how to put into words what he was feeling.

"You don't feel up for playing Uncle Derek right now?" said Carolyn gently.

"Yeah," he admitted with a twinge of shame. He started to apologize, but his mother moved right past it as if it were nothing at all.

"That's perfectly natural dear. You just had major surgery. But you owe us a visit out here once you're feeling better."

"Definitely."

"Well, that settles it. I'll pack a bag, book my ticket and see what I can do about a hotel."

"Or you could just stay with us," he offered.

"Oh, well, that would be lovely," said Carolyn. "But are you sure Meredith won't mind? I don't want to intrude."

"Um," said Derek. He looked over at Meredith and found her wide eyed and fearful, shaking her head back and forth. "Actually, hold on a sec." He took the phone from his mouth and covered it with his hand. "Meredith," he said apologetically. "She can stay at a hotel if you don't want—"

"No," stammered Meredith. "That's not it. I mean it's soon and a lot and I'm freaking out here, but it's the house, Derek. It's a warzone. There's broken glass everywhere, things knocked over. I don't…I don't know how I'm going to clean it all before she gets here! I guess now." She started to stand up. "If I go now, I could maybe have it done in time."

Derek shook his head. "Sit down," he said firmly. "You aren't going anywhere. I didn't even think about the earthquake. She'll understand." He uncovered the phone and cleared his throat. "Ma?"

"Yeah?" she said.

"I haven't been home since the earthquake, but Meredith was just there and apparently there's a lot of damage. It might be easier if you stay at a hotel after all."

"Of course," said Carolyn. "That's no trouble. I'll book a room, and I'll bring my rubber gloves and dustpans along in case you two need any help with the cleaning. And sweetheart," she added. "Next time, check with your other half before inviting me to stay at her home. Trust me, she'll appreciate it."

"Right," said Derek, cringing just a little. "I will."

"Good, now I want you to take it easy," said Carolyn. "And hopefully I'll be seeing you by tomorrow morning at the latest."

"Yeah," said Derek. "Have a safe trip." He looked back at Meredith as he hung up the phone. "Alright, scale of one to ten," he said. "How badly is this freaking you out?"

"Freaking me out?" she echoed in a high, thin voice. "Not at all. Zero. Negative one, even. I'm good. Great. Absolutely non-freaked. Your mother is coming, and I'm going to meet her, and the house looks like a warzone. And she probably hates me because I made her injured son call her instead of doing it myself. Not to mention I almost killed her only son. Oh god, I need to clean. She's going to think I'm some kind of crappy hostess who doesn't clean well." She got to her feet, swinging her bag up over her shoulder. "But this is good. Your mother. Here. In Seattle. Good."

"Rewind," said Derek cautiously. "What was the part about you almost killing me?"

Meredith paled. "What?"

"You haven't actually found a way to blame yourself for an earthquake, have you?"

She turned away from him, facing the patterns of light on the wall.

"Meredith, please," he begged, wondering how he had missed this on top of everything else.

"Well I should have figured it out," she snapped, her voice bitter and disparaging. "I should have realized. I had you in the room with me, bleeding out, and I didn't even think… I'm a _surgeon_. I mean, what the hell is wrong with me that I didn't figure it out?"

Derek could only stare at her, shaking his head. "Nothing is wrong with you. Nothing. You were doing a procedure that is years beyond what you should be asked to do, and you did it with no one there to help you. You didn't have time to think about anything other than the surgery. Don't blame yourself for that. You saved Sarah's life."

"I almost lost yours."

"It's not your fault," said Derek. "And I'm still here."

Meredith stayed facing the wall, her back rigid, her shoulders tense. "I should've realized," she whispered. "I should've realized."

She murmured the words to herself again and again, and the sound was like bare hands wrapped around his heart, squeezing and squeezing. He gripped the mattress and eased one leg over the edge, then the other. Gritting his teeth against the pain, Derek swung himself up onto his feet for the first time since he'd collapsed. The room spun wildly and there was a moment where he thought he was about to black out. He groped for something, anything to hold on to, finding first the wall and then his IV pole. By the time his fingers had tightened around the thin metal pole, Meredith was in front of him, steadying him with gentle hands.

"What are you doing?" she asked. Her voice was soft and a little incredulous.

He leaned against her as the room stopped spinning. He had a fleeting thought that this was the sort of thing he should find embarrassing, but the embarrassment never came. There was only comfort and a sense of rightness when she was the one holding him up.

But as the pain lessened and the dizziness faded he caught sight of the guilt in her eyes. "I couldn't just sit there and listen to you blame yourself," he said. "Blame the shoddy ceiling. Blame tectonic plates. Blame me, I don't care. But whatever you have to do, _please, _don't blame yourself for this. I can deal with being stuck here with half a spleen and a giant incision that makes it hell just to sit up. But I cannot deal with you thinking this is your fault. I can't accept that. It's just not true."

Meredith nodded but met his onslaught of words with shaky silence.

"And you did your first solo surgery," he added, hoping to cheer her up. "You saved a life."

She pressed her face against his hospital gown. Her answer, when it came, was very, very soft. "I didn't."

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't," she said again.

Derek used the hand that wasn't gripping his IV pole to lift her chin. "We tell each other things now," he said softly. "Tell me what you're thinking."

She looked up at him, regarding him from behind the shield of her eyelashes and the messy tumble of her hair. "Sit down," she said at last. Derek frowned but did as she said. The change from standing to sitting pulled on his muscles again and he longed to reach for his PCA, but he forced himself to hold out. If Meredith saw him needing it, he had no doubt that she'd clam up right away and insist on letting him rest. He'd be swallowed up by the sleepy crush of the drugs, and when he woke up again, she'd have bottled herself right back up and they'd never get around to what was bothering her. And so he just gritted his teeth and smiled at her. "Sitting," he said.

She didn't smile back. Instead, she started pacing back and forth in front of him. "I should've told you this morning, but I was so… I don't know. God, I was just…"

"What?"

Meredith shook her head. "I'm just going to say it. I'm going to say it and then we can…" She trailed off and took a deep breath; her voice turned very small. "Sarah hasn't woken up yet."

"Okay," said Derek. He wasn't sure exactly what he'd been expecting her to say, and he sat in silence, letting the truth settle heavily around him. "It doesn't always happen right away," he said. It was as much a reminder to himself as it was to her. "Brain surgery takes a lot out of the patient."

"But Beth woke up!" said Meredith. "She was awake by now."

"Beth also didn't experience an earthquake in the middle of her surgery. That's a factor here. We have to give her time to heal."

"So you think she could still wake up?"

He ran a weary hand back through his hair, only vaguely aware of how matted and disgusting it felt. "There's a chance. Forty-eight hour window."

"Forty-eight hours," echoed Meredith. "Okay. Okay, okay…" He heard the uncertainty in her voice and remembered in a rush how new this all still was for her. How easily she might blame herself, especially since she knew just how desperate he'd been to save the child.

"You didn't kill her," he said, reaching out to grasp her hand. "If she dies, it's the tumor that killed her. What you did was give Sarah her best chance at life."

Meredith just stared at him. "How can you be so calm? You almost died to keep her alive."

"Because I trust you," said Derek simply. It was actually easier this way. If he had done the surgery himself he knew he'd be second guessing every little thing, trying to find where he'd fallen short of perfect. But that just didn't happen with Meredith. He squeezed her hand tighter. "You handled more than I ever should have asked you to, and if what you did still isn't enough to save her… Well," he managed, his voice catching somewhere in his throat. "It sure wasn't for lack of trying."

She seemed to grow lighter in front of him and the smile she offered was tentative and beautiful. "Thank you," she said.

Derek returned her smile with one of his own. "Now that wasn't so bad, was it?"

"What?"

"Telling each other things."

"Oh, no," she said quickly. "It was good. Who needs secrets?" She laughed, but the sound was uneasy and he knew with a sudden, thudding certainty that everything still wasn't okay.

"Mer?"

She smiled a little too brightly, her lips pulled tight. "Yeah?"

"What's wrong?"

She backed away from him a few steps and shook her head. "Aren't I the one who's supposed to be asking things like that?" she said. "I'm good. You're the one recovering from surgery. How are you feeling? Better than this morning, right? I mean, you seem better. You were standing and now you're sitting up and you're less grumpy. Not that I minded the grumpy. It was very Oscar the Grouch, and he's probably the cutest Muppet if you're going to start considering that whole line-up."

Derek sat stunned into silence, wondering how she'd managed to swing the conversation around from whatever was making her so upset to Sesame Street characters of all things. He was getting weary from so much sitting up and thinking, but that made him feel old and feeble and he did his best to ignore his exhaustion.

"Is this about the thing?" he asked.

"The thing? What thing?"

"You know what I'm talking about. The thing I forgot."

"But—" began Meredith.

Derek held up a hand to stop her. "Don't tell me there isn't a thing. I know you, and I know it upset you somehow."

She stared at the bed for a long time and he waited, struggling to ignore the renewed throbbing all up and down his incision.

"Alright," she said at last. "There's a thing."

It was a small victory, but it was something, and he continued eagerly, "What was the thing?"

She shook her head. "You forgot it."

"I know I forgot it. If you would just tell me though, we could fix it."

She shook her head again, fiercer this time. "It doesn't work like that. You forgot. It's irrelevant now."

"I didn't forget on purpose!" said Derek incredulously, racking his brain for any hint of what had happened after the blood loss had taken him to the very edge of consciousness. He came up blank. And Meredith just stood there, giving him nothing. He bristled with frustration. "Is the thing something I said?"

"Yes…"

"Then tell me. Please, just tell me."

When she looked up at him, there were tears in her eyes. "I don't know how."

"All you have to do is you say it," he growled. "One word at a time. Tell me what happened and then we can do something about it."

"It's not that simple," she said, still shaking her head. "You don't _remember._ You have to remember!"

"Meredith, just tell me."

"I can't," she whispered. Her hands were shaking.

Derek slumped back against his pillows. His head was starting to pound from searching his foggy memories of the accident and his incision felt on fire. "Then I can't help you," he said, halfway between accusation and apology.

"I know," she said, her eyes still brimming with tears. She sniffled once and he stared at her. It suddenly felt like everything they'd accomplished with her mother's journal and the trust they'd shared in the OR was spinning away like water down a drain. He closed his eyes against the feeling.

"I'm going to get some sleep," he said. "I feel like hell."

"Okay," said Meredith with unusual timidity. "I'll let you rest. I'm going to, um, I'll go take a shower."

He grunted his acknowledgement but didn't open his eyes again until he heard the door swing shut.

-----

Derek was awoken by the soft sound of footsteps. He turned his head and blinked groggily, expecting to see Meredith slipping back into her usual chair, her hair still damp from her shower. Sleep and another dose of morphine had left him somewhat less frustrated, but the missing memory of the thing still nagged at him. It was a bit of a relief to find Bailey standing there instead; he stopped racking his brain once more and simply relaxed into the pillows.

She offered him a friendly smile. "Thought I'd find Grey in here with you," she said as she performed a quick check of his vitals.

"She went to take a shower."

"Hmm. Deep breath and cough," said Bailey.

He complied, only wincing a little this time. At least that was getting easier. "Do you think you'll be able to give her the time-off?" he asked, remembering how Meredith had gone chasing after her that morning in the hopes of getting a few more days to spend with him. He supposed the question could count as being overprotective yet again, but if he was honest, he was asking as much for himself as he was for her. Despite the undeniable awkwardness and frustration surrounding the forgotten thing, he wanted her with him. Needed her with him. She was better than morphine.

But Bailey was giving him a blank stare. "Elaborate for me, Shepherd."

"More time-off," he said. "She told me she asked you about it this morning but you weren't sure yet."

"Is that so?"

"She didn't ask you?"

Bailey just shrugged. "Must have been that other Dr. Bailey she was talking to."

He frowned and shook his head. Things kept getting stranger and stranger. "Then what was she talking to you about?"

"Wouldn't you like to know," said Bailey, her hands going to her hips.

"Oh come on, Bailey. I'm injured here. You have to be nice to me."

She rolled her eyes but gave in to an indulgent smile all the same. "She wanted to know about your scans."

"My scans?"

"That head scan you had this morning was per her request."

"Her request," he echoed slowly. It was the thing. It had to be. All roads led back to the thing. "What did it show?"

"It was perfectly clean," said Bailey. "I had Dr. Weller check it out himself just to be sure. There's nothing wrong with your head. At least no more than usual."

"But I'm not remembering something," he admitted, scratching at the itchy skin around his IV needle.

Bailey smirked. "So I heard."

"You know what it is?" he said, awe and disbelief creeping into his voice. "You really do know everything around here."

She only shrugged and made another note on his chart.

"Well?" prompted Derek.

"Well what?"

"What am I forgetting?"

"That's for her to tell you."

"Oh come on," he pleaded. "I've been trying and trying to remember, and I've got nothing. This is messing her up. You didn't see how upset she was. Whatever I did, I have to make it up to her."

"You don't have to make up for anything," said Bailey with surprising gentleness. "You know as well as I do that memory blackouts aren't uncommon in cases of traumatic injury. It's not your fault. It's just life."

"No. No, I have to remember. I can't be yet another person in her life who lets her down."

"The only person who can let Meredith down over this is Meredith. All you need to do is trust her like you did in that OR. She can handle this. Although what possessed you to hand a scalpel over to second year resident on a procedure like that, I'll never know."

He ignored the light jab and instead demanded, "If she can handle this, why is she so upset?"

"I said she could handle it. I never said it wasn't difficult for her. For a woman like Grey, what happened…it's very difficult. Give her some time."

Derek pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, feeling even more lost than before. "Alright," he relented. "Unless you want to give me another clue." He offered her what he hoped was his most charming smile. "If you do, I'll walk all the way to the door and back. Just for you."

Bailey let out a snort of laughter. "You just don't stop, do you?"

Derek shrugged and resettled against his pillows. "Figured it was worth a shot," he said, trying not to mind her reticence. If Bailey really did know everything, and it was certainly starting to feel like she did, it couldn't hurt to listen to her advice. But as she left, he could only manage a halfhearted smile, and even that faded as he dropped off into a fitful doze soon after.

When he awoke again, it was to the sound of an opening door. This time it was her. He could tell it was Meredith even before he opened his eyes. As if she did something to the very feel of the air in the room. She tiptoed towards him and when he opened his eyes, she stopped abruptly as if she'd been caught. Her hair was still damp from her shower and hung in tendrils down her back. Her eyes were red. Accusations floated through his mind, demands to know just what she'd said to Bailey sat on the tip of his tongue, but he left them there and smiled at her instead. She took another small step towards his bed, and all he knew was that she was achingly beautiful and he loved her.

She could have her secrets as long as she needed them.

"Did you get some sleep?" she asked quietly, reaching out to run her fingers up and down his arm. Her voice and her hand were tentative, but both felt wonderful.

He sought out her fingers with his own. "Yeah," he said. "I did."

"Good. That's good." She hesitated, picking at a loose thread on his blanket. "I'm sorry about before."

"I know. Me too."

"I want to say it," she continued earnestly. "I want to tell you what happened, but I…I can't. I guess I really am a screw-up after all." She punctuated her words with a huff of bitter laughter.

"You're no screw-up," said Derek. She started to roll her eyes, but he interrupted her, adding, "You lived through hell yesterday. Give yourself a break."

She turned towards the window, leaving him with only her profile. Her eyelids fluttered rapidly and he waited for her tears, but they never came.

"I'm sorry I can't say it."

"You will when you're ready."

"When I'm ready?"

"When you're ready," he agreed. "I can wait. I'm not going anywhere."

"What if I'm never ready? And you never remember?"

Derek sighed. He could hear the beeping of his monitors and the faint bustling sounds of the hospital from beyond his closed door. The air was sharp and sterile, but her skin was warm beneath his thumb. "Then I guess I wasn't meant to know."

"Right," said Meredith weakly, and she seemed closer to tears than ever before.

"Come here," he said, tugging on her hand. He started to ease himself over in bed to make room for her.

Meredith shook her head. "I can't. Derek, you're recovering from surgery. I might hurt you."

"You're not going to hurt me. Not any worse than it hurts to not be able to hold you. Come here. Please."

She did as he asked, easing slowly forward until she joined him on the bed. His arm fit around her and she nestled her head against his chest. She lay very stiff beside him as if she might hurt him just by breathing. But he tangled his fingers in her damp hair and pulled her closer.

"Relax," he said. "I'm okay." She was a slight weight against his side, little more than a cherished, familiar warmth. Gradually she let herself sag towards him until they were nestled together, her hand splayed against his chest.

"I missed this," she murmured. "Pathetic, right? Only one night without you in bed with me, and already I missed it."

"I missed it too," said Derek. He tightened his grip on her arm, his fingers rubbing idly at her skin. He felt stronger just having her beside him again. Less like a miserable, helpless post-op patient. They rested together and he listened to the soft sounds of her breathing. For the first time since waking up, he stopped worrying about forgetting the thing.

"You know," said Meredith, looking up a little to meet his eyes. "If Bailey comes in right now and catches me, I'm dead."

"No," said Derek. He smiled and pressed his lips to the top of her head. "If Bailey comes in, she'll understand."

-----

_And, I just want to say that I know people have wanted Derek to remember the proposal for a loooong time now, but what's going to happen re: proposal couldn't happen in Derek's chapter. It has to happen in Meredith's chapter. Which is the absolute next thing. I promise._


	20. Chapter 19

The echoing slap-slap of Meredith's footsteps was all that kept her company as she headed down the empty hallway towards the cafeteria. Her stomach growled rudely yet again, reminding her she hadn't fed it since that morning when she'd taken a few bites of cold spaghetti before hearing Carolyn's voice on her answering machine. After that, she hadn't felt up for eating. Derek was still restricted to a liquid diet, but her growling stomach had eventually grown so loud that he'd sent her down to the cafeteria despite her protests.

It was well past the dinner rush, and a lone cafeteria worker kept watch over old slices of pizza shoved beneath a row of heating lamps. The sight of them turned her stomach and she was usually one who made a beeline straight for junk food, but under that light, the cheese looked like rubber. She decided on another cup of coffee and just as she was about to go pay, she snatched up a ham and cheese sandwich wrapped in cellophane. It appealed to her only slightly more than the pizza had, but Derek wanted her to eat, and she would do anything he asked right now. Anything except tell him about the thing, she remembered dully as she paid for her sandwich and coffee.

She tried to ward off the pang of guilt that brought, but it came and she winced inwardly, struggling to smile at the graying woman working the register. The woman wished her a good evening and Meredith nodded. She was exhausted. Her muscles ached all over from the sleepless night in the chair by Derek's bed and the stress of the day before. The cuts and scratches she had gotten in the earthquake had started stinging again when she took her shower and hadn't stopped yet. The only good thing she could think of was that she had the next five days off. Bailey had found her in the hallway earlier that day and told her as much. She had a sinking suspicion it was because she'd come across as a total basket case that morning. Or maybe she really did look as tired as she felt and she was beginning to feel like the walking dead. Either way, it didn't really matter. It was time off to be with Derek. The whole hospital could call her a zombie basket case and she wouldn't care.

Meredith was walking in a dull fog across the cafeteria when she stopped short. Alone at a far table by the window sat Cristina hunched over a pile of charts, her curly black hair pulled up in a messy bun and held in place by one very well chewed pencil. She stared at her best friend, feeling as if she was made entirely of shattered glass. Not quite sure of what she was doing, she shuffled across the cafeteria and plopped down in the empty chair beside Cristina.

"Hey," she said, more than a little shyly. Cristina looked up but said nothing. "I, about earlier, that was…" She hesitated and filled the silence with the crackling of cellophane as she unwrapped her sandwich. Cristina just kept on writing.

Meredith sighed and yanked on her hair. She felt utterly exhausted. Even stringing sentences together took a monumental effort at this point. 'Cristina, I'm trying to apologize here," she said, her voice rising and shaking unexpectedly. She hadn't sat down meaning to apologize. She hadn't sat down with any real plan at all. All she knew was that she felt like she was drowning again and the only thing she wanted was her best friend back.

When Cristina remained silent and stony-faced, she closed her eyes against the sudden sting of tears. The words came spilling out. "Derek asked me to marry him."

There was a long pause and then, "Congratulations," said Cristina flatly, still not looking up from her work. "Now was this before you screamed at me to get out of the room or after?"

Meredith shook her head, chewing on her lower lip. The tears in her eyes became harder to keep away. "He asked me yesterday," she whispered, staring out the window at the darkened sidewalk and the black, endless night. It seemed to be rushing towards her through the glass to swallow her whole. "Right before he collapsed," she continued, still staring straight ahead. "I said yes and now he…now he doesn't remember any of it."

"Oh." Cristina's voice was soft and surprised. Meredith watched raindrops run down the wide windowpane in front of her. They echoed in the tears on her cheeks. When she finally looked over, Cristina was studying her closely.

"And you're not going to tell him," she said. It wasn't a question.

Meredith shook her head. "I don't know," she said, a little louder than she'd meant to. "Besides, you think I'd be better off without him, and he doesn't even remember anyway, so whatever. Maybe it's just not the right time."

"Fine," said Cristina with an abrupt shrug.

"Fine? What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's up to you."

"It's not just up to me! Derek could still remember. He could," she said emphatically. She wasn't quite sure who she was trying to convince.

"And if he doesn't? You'll just, what? Forget you got engaged?"

Meredith shrugged and picked at her sandwich. It was soggy and tasteless but she forced herself to take a few bites to keep from answering. Cristina just kept watching her, waiting for an answer. "I don't know," she mumbled at last, growing uncomfortable under her constant stare. "Maybe."

"Maybe," Cristina scoffed. "So you didn't really mean it then?"

"Mean what?"

"That he was going to be your husband one day."

"I meant it!" said Meredith indignantly. "I did. But I didn't know he was about to propose to me and then forget about it. I had no idea, Cristina. Why are you making this my fault?"

"Because it is your fault. You have everything you claim to want sitting right in front of you, and you're refusing to take it!"

"So now you want me to marry Derek? I thought you hated him."

Cristina stared at her for a long time and when she finally spoke, every trace of her usual sarcasm was gone. Her voice was quiet and even. "I watched you fall apart over him. You weren't okay. For a long time, Meredith. You really weren't okay."

It was what she'd said after the earthquake, only this time, the anger didn't come in response. Meredith stared down at her sandwich, squishing a thumbprint into it. "I know," she mumbled. "But that wasn't all him."

"He helped."

"He helped me get better too."

"I thought it was therapy that made you all shiny and new," said Cristina, the sarcasm back in full force.

"It helped, but Derek's helped too," muttered Meredith, still staring down at her squashed sandwich. "He's different now. We're both different. I told him some stuff about my mother and—" She pressed her lips into a thin line, thinking of how he'd found her in the shower and somehow still loved her. "He's helped," she said again.

Cristina sighed. "Well what are you trying to get me to tell you?" she asked. "That I think you should go running into Derek's arms, tell him about the proposal and get married tomorrow?"

"I don't know," moaned Meredith, letting her head fall forward to rest in her hands. She was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to wake up and find this had all been a very bad dream. "I just don't know what to do."

She felt Cristina reach over and lay a hand lightly on her arm, fingers just barely touching her. "Look," she said flatly. "I want you to be happy. And I don't know if marrying Derek will make you happy, but I do know you won't be happy if you keep this huge secret from him for the rest of your life."

Meredith looked up. "The rest of my life?"

"Or whatever," amended Cristina.

"No, not whatever. The rest of my life. You said it. You believe it now, that Derek and I could be together the rest of our lives?"

Cristina narrowed her eyes. "Do you need me to?"

"Well, no… But it'd be nice to know you don't think it's a horrible idea."

"Fine. It's not the worst idea you've ever had," said Cristina with a small smile. There was genuine warmth in her eyes, and Meredith understood all that wasn't said. They would be okay. She hadn't lost her best friend.

"Thanks," she said, but then her smile faltered. She collapsed once more towards the remains of her sandwich. "Oh what am I going to do?" she moaned.

"Wait, you're seriously still considering keeping this a secret? After I went and said nice things about McDreamy?"

"Well how do you sit someone down and tell them they forgot proposing to you?" demanded Meredith. She picked up her coffee cup only to put it back down when it shook in her hand. "He's sick. He's recovering from major surgery. What if this is too much for him right now?"

Cristina snorted. "Oh you are _so_ afraid."

"Am not," she said emphatically, snatching up a napkin. She twisted it around and around her fingers and then began ripping it to shreds. "I love Derek. Derek loves me. We're very happy people here, okay? What could there possibly be for me to be afraid of. That's ridiculous!"

Cristina just leveled a look at her. "Did you say yes because you thought he was dying or did you say yes because you're really ready to be his wife?"

"I…" Meredith's mouth gaped open. "I, um…I said yes because—" She shook her head. There was whirring white noise inside her mind where the answer was supposed to be. "I don't know," she said quietly, staring down at the tabletop. "It's irrelevant."

"It's not irrelevant," began Cristina, but Meredith cut her off.

"It is. He asked. I said yes. End of story." She stood up abruptly, the chair screeching against the tile floor as it skidded back from the table. Her hands shook as she gathered up her sandwich and coffee cup. "It's so irrelevant that I'm going to tell him right now. I'm just going to tell him and it's gonna be fine."

She left with little more than a determined smile and marched herself back to the ICU only to end up sitting alone on the floor outside Derek's room, her courage dying an abrupt death. The tile was very cold and she stared at her knees. She could do this. She could tell him the thing. Because she was absolutely, completely ready to be a wife-type person and Derek wanted to marry her even though he'd gone and forgot they were engaged.

Except she couldn't so much as touch the stupid doorknob.

Meredith leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes, taking deep breaths to steady herself. She could do this. She could. She could. Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked them away. This wasn't supposed to be so hard.

She stared at her knees and tried to blame it all on the earthquake. If it hadn't happened, Derek would be fine. There would be no forgotten proposal. He'd ask her to marry him two or six or eight months from now, and he'd probably do something sweet and cheesy because he was Derek and he liked that kind of stuff. And he wouldn't almost die right after it. But it was no use because she could already hear his voice inside her head, saying those words. The words.

Marry me, Mer.

There was no forgetting them.

She chewed on her lip and sat there feeling sick for the longest time. Nurses and orderlies gave her strange looks when they went by, but no one said anything. She was Meredith Grey after all. People seemed to expect her to be a bit of a mess.

She held her left hand out in front of her and stared at her naked ring finger. All she needed was a sign. Maybe a ring could fall from a crack in the ceiling and land right on her fourth finger. Or a spare fairy godmother could wander through the doors of Seattle Grace and tell her what to do. Anything. She laughed miserably, her head falling forward to rest against her knees. She just needed some way to know she wasn't about to screw up everything she had with Derek by opening her mouth.

But the hospital was apparently all out of fairy godmothers and magically appearing rings because nothing freaking happened. There was no sign. She wasn't any closer to knowing what to do. Instead, she wrapped her arms tight around her knees and tried not to think at all.

Her legs had fallen asleep by the time her pager went off, buzzing insistently against her hipbone. She frowned as she turned to check it; she was supposed to be off work. She shouldn't have to hide the freaking pager just to get a day where she wasn't troubled by the hospital. But when she focused on the screen, she recognized the number as a 911 to the PICU, and that could only mean one thing. Sarah. She leapt up, wincing at the pins and needles in her feet as she shook the life back into them for a second or two before taking off at a run.

This could not be happening. It was the only thought in her head as she ran. Sarah couldn't die. She just couldn't die. Meredith ran faster, the air burning its way into her lungs. She dodged nurses and patients and doctors, only aware that she had to go faster still, faster and faster, that she had to be there in time. She thundered through the PICU and skidded to a stop in front of the room she'd visited the night before. The door stood open and Hess waited right outside.

"What is it?" she gasped, clutching at her side. "What's wrong? I came as fast as I could."

Hess just smiled and tilted his head towards the open door. "I didn't want you to miss this," he said, giving her a little push. "This is Dr. Grey," he added, raising his voice a bit to address the whole room. Meredith looked around, blinking as she took in the overwhelming contrast between all the machines needed in any ICU unit and the bright, exuberant wallpaper choices that belonged to the PICU. Two figures stood over the bed and they both turned towards her as Hess spoke. She recognized Olivia by her messy blonde hair. Tears were streaming down her face. Meredith took a deep breath. This was it. The moment they made her look at their dead daughter and see what she had done. Except, when she looked past Olivia to the bed in the center of the room, she saw a tiny girl, her head swathed in bandages, blinking at her with big, beautiful eyes.

The next moment, Olivia had flung herself into Meredith's arms and was clinging fiercely to her as she wept. "Thank you," she cried. "Thank you, thank you, thank you." She said it again and again, her voice cracking with joy, and Meredith hugged her back, too stunned to do anything else.

"Okay, Liv," said a man after a little while. His voice was gentle and it sounded like he smiled as he spoke. "Let the doctor breathe."

Olivia laughed self-consciously and pushed back a little, holding Meredith at arm's length as she gave her a watery smile. "I'm sorry, it's just you don't know how much you've done for us. You gave us back our baby. I can't even think right now I'm so happy! Meredith—" She hesitated a moment and raised a questioning eyebrow. "I can still call you Meredith?"

Meredith smiled back. "You can."

"Well, Meredith, I want you to meet my husband, Mike." She gestured towards the man that had interrupted the hug. Meredith found herself looking up at a brown-haired man with a friendly face. Tears glistened in his eyes as well.

He grasped her hand, almost swallowing it in his larger one, and squeezed it tightly. "It's an honor to meet you," he said. "Dr. Hess told us what happened during the surgery, and it takes an extraordinary person to do what you did. I'll be in your debt the rest of my life."

Meredith nodded, at a loss for words. She'd done it. Saved a life. She felt like she was standing in the middle of some perfect dream and even blinking might make it disappear. "Thank you," she managed at last and turned to stare at Sarah in disbelief. The child was alive. Awake and looking right back at her, a shy smile on her face. She held a bandaged teddy bear tucked into the crook of her arm. Meredith smiled back at her, feeling so happy she thought she might start crying.

"Could I," she began quietly. "Would it be alright if I said hello to her?"

"Of course," said Olivia as Mike chimed in with his agreement. She led the way towards Sarah's bed and Meredith followed a little behind her. "Sarah," said Olivia as she sat down on the edge of her daughter's bed. Sarah leaned towards her a little, her small hand latching onto her mother's arm. "I want you to meet someone very special. This is the doctor who did your surgery. Her name is Dr. Grey."

Meredith smiled at Sarah again, but this time the child didn't smile back. "Not Dr. Shepherd?" she asked in a little voice still hoarse from so long under intubation.

"No, ah…" Olivia smoothed a gentle hand over the bandage on her daughter's head and looked to Meredith, deferring the answer to her.

"He got hurt, Sarah, so he couldn't do your surgery," said Meredith.

"He has an owie too?"

"Yes," said Meredith. "But he's going to be okay."

Sarah just looked at her skeptically, pursing her lips together in a frown. "How do you know that?"

"Um, he's…well, he's someone important to me. Someone I love very much," she said softly.

Sarah frowned at her a moment longer but then nodded her head, apparently satisfied with the answer.

"How is he doing?" asked Olivia. "That must have been terrifying for you." Meredith pushed at her bangs. Terrifying didn't begin to do it justice. She stared down at her lap and struggled to keep away the horrible, queasy feeling that washed over her every time she thought about his collapse in the OR. He was okay now. He was absolutely fine.

She looked up and took a deep breath. "It was hard," she said and her voice cracked unexpectedly. Olivia reached over and laid a comforting hand on her arm. Meredith forced a smile back onto her face, still fighting against the image of Derek's body on the OR floor. She felt like she now lived perpetually on the verge of tears. "But it's over now," she said firmly. "He's doing much better. And I know he'd love to come visit you," she told Sarah.

"He could come to my room to play?" asked Sarah, smiling a dimpled smile.

"Sure," said Meredith with a glance at Mike and Olivia. "If that's okay with your mom and dad."

"That would be wonderful," said Olivia.

Mike nodded his head. "Absolutely."

But Sarah had gone back to studying Meredith, her eyes sharp and inquisitive and bright with questions. She leaned forward a little like a tiny detective. "You could get Dr. Shepherd to bring him to my room to play?" she asked slowly.

"Yes," said Meredith. She couldn't stop the smile that spilled across her face. Derek would be delighted.

"How?"

"Well…" She hesitated a moment, not quite sure of what the child was asking. "I'll bring him with me. I know he'd love to see you again. He's going to be so happy when I tell him that you're awake."

"Are you and Dr. Shepherd like how Mommy and Daddy are?" pressed Sarah, her small voice full of innocence and curiosity.

"Are we, umm," stammered Meredith. She could feel her cheeks flush and she shifted her weight from foot to foot. "Kind of." At least, they could be.

She looked at Mike and Olivia seated on either side of their daughter's bed, holding onto her and each other. A tiny, perfect family. Their love for each other and their daughter was written plainly in their eyes, and it made her heart hurt in the very best of ways. It was suddenly so easy to see why Derek had gotten attached to Sarah. Why he had almost imagined her as their daughter. Because she felt it too. Wanted it too. All of it. The whole family, forever thing.

"Yes," she said and her voice came out stronger than she thought it could. "We're like how your Mommy and Daddy are."

She grinned at the three of them, her eyes filling with tears. She was certain she looked like an idiot, but it didn't matter anymore. There was nothing left to be afraid of.

"I'm sorry, I have to go do this thing," she said. "It's really important. But I'm, I'm so glad Sarah's okay." She kept grinning as she backed towards the door. Olivia just smiled warmly at her and Meredith thought not for the first time that the woman was almost painfully nice. "I'll come back and visit. Derek and I, we'll both come back. As soon as I do this thing."

And then she was gone out the door and running down the hall, her footsteps pounding in time with her heartbeats. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime, panic wasn't rising swiftly inside her as she ran. Instead, she felt almost lighter than air and all she could think was that it felt so freaking good to have something to run to.

She came to a stop outside Derek's room and, still struggling to catch her breath, she pushed open the door. It wasn't so hard this time.

Derek sat upright in bed, flipping through the channels on the TV. He looked up at the sight of her, but his smile fell away immediately and he turned off the television.

"Meredith, what's wrong?"

She shook her head, laughing a little. "Nothing. Nothing's wrong. Nothing at all."

"You're crying."

She raised her hands to her cheeks and felt the tears streaming down her face. She hadn't even noticed. "Oh. I'm okay. It's okay."

But he sat up a little straighter, his eyes dark with disbelief. "What is it? Where were you?"

"I was—" Meredith laughed again. The words waited on the tip of her tongue and it felt wonderful. "I was with Sarah. Derek, she's awake."

Tears filled his eyes to match hers and he smiled brighter than the sun in her eyes only she never wanted to look away. "Say that again."

She laughed and wiped at the tears on her face. "Sarah is awake."

That time he laughed with her and she swore it was the most beautiful sound in the whole freaking world. "You're incredible. You're absolutely incredible."

"I had help," she said softly.

Derek shook his head. "No. That was all you, Meredith. You did it. You saved her."

"Not without you. I never would've picked up the scalpel if I didn't know I had you behind me the whole time. We did it."

He hesitated a moment as if about to contradict her, but instead he relented and smiled at her again. "We make a good team."

"We do," said Meredith, her voice breaking. The tears started coming harder and her shoulders trembled, but she couldn't stop smiling.

He sat up straighter at that, leaning towards her. "Are you sure nothing's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," stammered Meredith. "I just, I have to say something, and I think it can still be okay. Because we got through an earthquake together. And a secret wife. And all the crap from my mother. And if we can get through all of that, we can get through anything, right?" Her voice was trembling, but she went on without giving him time to answer. "And because Sarah's with her parents and they're all smiling and they're happy. Derek, they're this family, and something about that makes me so—" She raised her hands in the air, shaking her head. "I wasn't sure, but now I know. I want that. I really freaking want that. And I think you do too. So I'm just going to be brave because if I don't do this now, I'll regret it forever. And I really think it could be a good thing. And if it's not, I think we'll get through it too. We have to, right? I mean—"

"Meredith," said Derek, interrupting her. "What are you talking about?"

She swallowed hard and held her breath and looked him straight in the eyes. "You asked me to marry you, Derek. That's the thing. That's what you forgot."

His jaw dropped open a little and he blinked at her. "I proposed?"

"Yes."

He hesitated a moment and then spoke. His voice was very quiet. "What did you say?"

"Yes."

He blinked up at her in wonder. "You said yes?"

Her smile brightened and grew a little bolder. "I did."

"So we're engaged?" he said slowly.

"Yes. If you want to be."

Derek just nodded and stared at his lap. His face grew troubled, his eyes very dark. The air felt electric against her skin. The happy rush of the moment before fell away and she learned then just how loud silence could be. It roared around her and she trembled on the inside. Her voice shook when she spoke. "Say something. Please."

"How could I forget that?" He raised his eyes to hers and they shone with a blue fire, hot with anger. "How could I do that to you?"

She shook her head. "It's okay. You were hurt."

"That doesn't matter," he hissed. "Meredith, I am so sorry."

Anger still lingered in the lines of his face and she scuffed the toe of her shoe against the floor. "That you asked me?"

"What?" said Derek. "No! I'm sorry I forgot. I'm sorry I put you through that on top of everything else." He shook his head ruefully and scowled at the intravenous line snaking into his arm. "I'm sorry I don't remember the one moment I should be able to remember for the rest of my life." Tears pooled in his eyes and streamed silently down his face. He left them there as if he didn't even notice.

She crossed to his bed in three steps, tugging him gently towards her. He sat on the edge of the mattress and she stood between his legs and wrapped her arms around him. His head fell forward, his forehead resting in the hollow between her breasts.

"I'll remember it then," whispered Meredith. "For the both of us." Her own words left her cold, and something deep inside her seemed to shiver. They touched too close to the thing she never let herself think about. The dark fear that was never acknowledged but always there like a shadow lurking underwater. She closed her eyes before she spoke, not quite believing that she was telling him this. "But you remember everything else. In case I forget."

Derek lifted his head and looked up at her. "What?"

"My mother. You really want a wife who might get Alzheimer's?"

"I want you forever," he said fiercely. "No matter what that means."

Her heart seemed to lift up in her chest and all she could think was how much she loved him. She laid a hand on his cheek and struggled to speak. "Then I'll remember this one, and you remember all the rest. Just in case."

He pulled her hand from his cheek and flipped it over, pressing his lips to her palm. "I promise."

She was silent for a long time, able to do little more than smile. But then she reached out to toy with the hair that curled over his ears and her voice grew nervous once more. "So you're really okay with this? Being engaged to me?"

"Why wouldn't I be? I'm the one who asked."

"But you don't remember. And maybe it was just the blood loss talking. And if it was, if you don't want to marry me, I'll understand," she stammered, speaking too quickly. It was a lie. She wasn't sure what she'd do if he wanted to take it back, but she was feeling pretty sure her heart might actually break in two.

"Meredith, I have always wanted to marry you. Always. I was just never brave enough to ask before, and I…" He hesitated a moment, uncertainty flickering in the depths of his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was soft. "I didn't think you were ready."

"I wasn't," she admitted.

He caught both her hands in his and held them firmly. "Are you sure you're ready now?" he asked. "I know it's hard to say no to the guy who might be dying, but I'm okay now, and if you're not ready for this yet, that's okay too. I'll still be here. We can do this later."

"No." She shook her head in amazement, holding tight to his hands. "I used to be scared, but…I'm not anymore. It's, well, it's what I was trying to say earlier. With Sarah and her parents. I had this feeling and I just know now. I want to be that with you!"

He raised an eyebrow, grinning a little. "Parents?"

"Well, yes," she said, surprising herself with how easy it was to admit. She sat down on the bed beside him. "I want to have kids with you. But I mean I want a life with you. All of it. I want to be your wife."

He ran his hands up her arms and over her shoulders until he was cupping her face in his palms. "So we're getting married?" he asked, his thumb brushing against her cheek.

"We are."

She leaned towards him, pressing a cautious hand against his chest as she kissed him. His lips were soft and familiar and perfect against hers, and she was pretty sure that the giddy feeling in her chest was because she was holding the entire freaking world in the palm of her hand. It was her oyster or whatever. She kissed him again and again and again, moaning into his mouth before pulling back abruptly.

"Crap. No more of that," she panted.

Derek raised an eyebrow. "No more kissing your fiancé? Your poor, _injured _fiancé, I might add." His mouth curved into a delicious teasing grin and all she wanted was to suck on his lower lip. He had the world's most perfect lower lip. But instead she shook her head and scooted back a little, trying to get the needy, whiny part of her brain to shut up and stop demanding sex already.

He leaned in and trailed a line of kisses along her neck. All the heat rushed back and she whimpered, pressing a hand against his chest to push him away. "Not if you keep kissing me like that!" she gasped. "Because then I'm going to want what comes after the kissing. And I know we can't do _that _yet."

"Sorry," muttered Derek, and she thought she detected an undercurrent of frustration running through his voice. "I'll make it up to you. I promise. I'll make up for all of it."

Meredith sighed and flopped down on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. "You don't have to make anything up to me," she said gently as he lay down beside her. "Except for the sex. That you can make up. Multiple times." She grinned wickedly at him, but he returned it with a wan smile.

"Derek," she sighed when he remained silent. "This telling each other thing goes both ways, you know. Especially since we're getting married. I'm pretty sure married people tell each other things all the time."

Derek heaved a sigh and ran his hands over his face. "I used to think about it," he said quietly, his voice muffled by his hands. "How I'd propose to you. I wanted you to have a perfect proposal. Not what I put you through."

"Stop it," said Meredith. "I don't need perfect. I wouldn't know what to do if you got down on one knee and gave me roses. I'm happy. The only thing wrong is…" She trailed off and stared at him, tracing the lines of his face with a fingertip. He had no memory of it. He didn't know what her voice sounded like when she said yes. "Ask me again," she whispered.

"What?"

"The only thing that's wrong is that you don't remember."

His face crumpled. "I'm sorry. I want to—"

"Shhh…" She moved her finger down to press against his lips. Their bodies were close together, their sides touching, their feet tangled together. She could feel his breath warm against her skin. "Ask me again," she said, her voice low and earnest. "Right now."

The worry left his face and was replaced by a look of wonder. Softly, he touched her hair. His eyes were close and blue and all around her; she felt she could drown herself in them. His lips parted and she waited desperately for his voice, her heart racing in her chest. He smiled at her.

"Meredith Grey, will you marry me?"

"Yes," she whispered breathlessly as tears pooled in her eyes. "Yes, yes, yes." She whispered the word again and again, kissing him as she spoke. Her hair fell over them like a curtain, and time seemed suddenly meaningless. There was nothing beyond this moment and she had never felt more alive. The word seemed to echo in her heartbeats and race through her bloodstream.

"Yes," she said a final time as she pulled away to lie beside him on the pillow. She knew his smile matched her own. He took her hand, weaving their fingers together, and they lay in silence, simply staring at each other for a long time.

"Thank you for telling me," he murmured. "I know you were afraid."

"I thought…" She closed her eyes. "God, it's horrible what I thought."

He only pulled her closer, his voice soft against her skin. "You thought maybe I wasn't remembering because I hadn't really meant it."

She shrugged and squirmed a little in his arms. It was almost unnerving how well he'd learned to read her. "I'm not exactly the type of woman guys line up to marry."

"You're the only woman I want to marry," said Derek firmly. "Never doubt us. Never doubt how much I love you. It will always be true."

"Me too," she said. She was never as comfortable as he was when it came to declaring things like feelings. Her voice was quieter than his and it shook a little as she spoke, but she meant every word. "It'll always be true."

Derek kissed her softly and tugged her closer so her head was nestled against his chest. She could feel his fingers running up and down her back, soft and soothing, and it became a struggle to keep her eyes open. Now that the constant worrying about the thing had stopped, exhaustion was creeping up on her. She lay in his arms and fought to stay awake as he mumbled things to her about the future. Their future. She managed to follow along for awhile, but then she began to tremble, her aching body begging her to rest.

Derek's hand stilled against her back. "Hey," he said softly, his voice full of concern. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," she sniffled. Tears were leaking from her eyes and the room was a blur.

"Meredith…"

"I'm so tired," she blurted out, her words a wobbly whine of exhaustion.

"Did you get any sleep last night?"

"I tried," said Meredith. "But I was all… And you were so…" She shook her head and balled her hands into fists, rubbing at her eyes. "I'm good now. I'm awake. You should rest."

Derek just reached over and pulled her hands gently down from her face. "I know you wanted to take care of me. And you did. I couldn't have gotten through yesterday without you. But now, _now_," he repeated, smoothing the hair out of her eyes. "It's my turn."

"But," she began weakly. He shook his head.

"Sleep, Meredith." His voice lulled her towards something dark and peaceful. "I'm okay. And I'll be here when you wake up." She felt a hand run through her hair. He was okay. They were engaged. It was all okay. "You can sleep now." She could. "Sleep."

For a hazy moment, all she knew was the safety of his arms around her, and then she slept.


End file.
